


Can't We Just Talk?

by camerasparring



Category: IT (1990), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angry Sex, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Barebacking, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Character Death Mention (Eddie's Mother), Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, First Time, Jealousy, M/M, Memory is a Fickle Thing, Mutual Pining, Poor Joey Never Had a Chance, Post-Canon Fix-It, Riding, Rimming, Romance, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:46:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26515417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camerasparring/pseuds/camerasparring
Summary: From an early age, Richie Tozier learned the distinct and quintessential difference between talking his wayoutof a bind and talking his waythroughone. If you’re trying to use words to reason, well. Those words will most likely have to make sense. But if you’re talking a blue streak, ain’t no sense required. Just words. And Richie’s had words pouring out of him since the moment his trap flapped open and nonsense came out.It’s worked well for him a good… seventy-five perfect of the time. Well, zero percent if you consider none of his marriages have panned out, but his Initiation Rates are through the roof. Getting a woman, boy howdy, talking will get you there any day.Keepinga woman? That’s where the other twenty-five percent comes in.(Not to mention keeping… anyone else.)--Richie Tozier goes home, but he still feels like something is missing.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 45
Kudos: 196





	Can't We Just Talk?

**Author's Note:**

> Here it finally is: my plotted Miniseries fic. I'm proud of this one, so I hope y'all enjoy it.
> 
> Thank you to [Laser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suttapitaka/pseuds/suttapitaka) for the enthusiastic beta, to the Ben's Phat Cheekbones GC for everything and [stitchy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy) for always being a miniseries inspiration, cheerleader and over-researcher ;)
> 
> The title is from the Khalid song, Talk, because writing to Khalid is the closest thing to sexy peace I can find.

From an early age, Richie Tozier learned the distinct and quintessential difference between talking his way _out_ of a bind and talking his way _through_ one. If you’re trying to use words to reason, well. Those words will most likely have to make sense. But if you’re talking a blue streak, ain’t no sense required. Just words. And Richie’s had words pouring out of him since the moment his trap flapped open and nonsense came out. 

His mother used to tell him his first word was “mama,” but she was always a bit of a selfish nut, cracked long before he arrived. He figures it was something more like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” — one long word with absolutely no breathing room, the Richie Tozier special. That, and he’d have given anything to impress Dame Julie Andrews at that young of an age. Blonde hair, big, beautiful eyes, a voice like an angel. And that’s another place this talking gig really comes in handy (other than the gobs of money, the eventual fame, and the total lack of self-satisfaction): the ladies. 

It’s worked well for him a good… seventy-five perfect of the time. Well, zero percent if you consider none of his marriages have panned out, but his Initiation Rates are through the _roof_. Getting a woman, boy howdy, talking will get you there any day. _Keeping_ a woman? That’s where the other twenty-five percent comes in. 

(Not to mention keeping… anyone else.) 

When you talk in a constant loop, someone’s bound to eventually push you off course. Throw off your orbit until you’re floating out there on your own, stuck with the consequences. Talking is easy. Living with what you said can be damn near impossible. Richie Tozier has said a lot of things he’s lived to regret. 

Comes with the territory. 

But in the end, the not-saying seems more dangerous. Talking is easy. Actually saying something is the hard part. 

* * *

“All mended up, Spaghetti Man?” Richie drawls into the receiver on a sunny November evening, his cheeks heating at the sound of Eddie’s sigh on the other end.

“I dunno,” Eddie hedges, his words crawling together like comfort, a familiar exasperated tone. “I thought I was well on my way to recovery but you’re starting to bring on a flare up.” 

Richie laughs, and gets a bit of a reprieve on Eddie’s end, too. 

“Apologies, apologies, I’ll take it easy on the invalid.” 

Another sigh. “I’m perfectly capable of being—”

“No, no, I’m well-aware of your strength there, Eddie. I saw you take down that—” Shit. Shit shit shit. Clearing his throat over the gap where _It_ or _Pennywise_ or _that giant clown slash spider monstrosity_ would fit, Richie tries again. “Anyway, you’re the one who rang me, how may I help you on this fine evening, beyond quick-witted pseudonyms and brash humor?” 

He can practically hear Eddie smile. Call it wishful thinking, but gosh, he hopes not. He’d give anything to get another glimpse of those lips stretching hesitantly, up from the corners, baring white teeth, all light and airy, like the man himself. But Eddie grunts instead.

“Just calling to, uh. I guess… check.” Richie hears something shuffling in the background, maybe Eddie’s feet against the floor. He’s nervous. Yeah, well, join the club, bud. “I just talked to Bill, he’s leaving Derry soon and he’s a little worried that we’re all going to… you know.” 

Ah, yes. The classic Kaspbrak Euphemism. “You know.” “That _thing_.” “The event.” 

All deflection and no truth makes Eddie a superficial conversation buddy. 

And dancing among the light topics and general life musings is where Richie and Eddie have landed since Derry. Since Eddie woke up, healed up, and up and left. 

But they’re not talking about that “event” either. 

“What?” Richie huffs, twirling the line around his finger and staring out at the waves. They’re supposed to calm him. Instead it’s like they torment him. “He’s worried we’re gonna go all _Overboard_ on him again?” 

“Well,” Eddie says softly, “it wouldn’t be the first time.” 

“You do have the hair for it, Goldie,” Richie laughs, the walls of his throat shuddering painfully, but maybe that way he can push away the grain of truth at the bottom of the statement.

Bill, Ben, Beverly, Mike (he says the names on a loop, every morning when he wakes)— they’ve all reached out since Richie made the long trek back home to Beverly Hills. It’s not like it was before: he can recall rather quickly. It’s not a flash flood this time; more like a gentle trickle that passes in and out as the tide moves further out to sea. His memories remain, but shaded, tinted away from him, like they’re trying to reflect the light of his life back out into the world to protect him. The longer he spends without talking to them, the more blinding the light.

This is the first time Eddie’s called. 

He didn’t forget Eddie, try as he might. 

(He didn’t try.)

“I don’t know about you, Eddie darling, but I don’t remember introducing myself when I picked up the phone.” 

Eddie hums, soft and sweet. He’s always so soft. Soft hair, soft eyes, soft voice. It’s almost too much just to hear him. To be in his presence, no matter how far away. 

“I s’pose you’re right,” says Eddie. A bolt of vindication currents through Richie’s body. “Mike says the same. And Bill does have a few other things… occupying his mind.” 

“And what about the resident lovebirds?” It’s a deflection, but Richie doesn’t want to talk about Bill dragging Audra out of the sewers, like he dragged Eddie. He doesn’t want to remember the way he met Bill’s eyes on the way to the hospital, or the way Bill just kicked up his eyebrows and _shrugged_ , like maybe both of their lives weren’t a stone’s throw away from crumbling down around them.

And he certainly doesn’t want to talk about the burning guilt at the bottom of his throat; how Audra’s still stuck in a catatonic nightmare while Eddie’s walking around free and (presumably) happy in New York, thousands of miles away from where Richie would prefer him.

“Displaced lovebirds?” Richie corrects, frowning. “Where are they living now? In that big metal monstrosity Ben calls a home? Or did they kick ol’ good-for-nothing Tom outta his impressive abode to consummate their new and true relationship?” 

Richie hears Eddie take a breath. He imagines him standing at the counter in his kitchen, tapping his finger against the tile, long legs stretched, one crossed over the other.

“Last I heard I guess they were headed out west. Climbed in a big rental car and hit the road. Oh!” he exclaims, cutting himself off. “You know Beverly actually called me last week!” 

The excitement almost bleeds through to Richie’s heart, caught swirling around the pause in Eddie’s recollection. 

But then Eddie says, “Seems we’re set to be Uncles this time next year,” and the chatty man is officially floored. 

It’s been _weeks_. Barely feels like a couple months, though Richie knows as well as the chill moves through the air that the time is creeping forward again. For a while there in the hospital, everything felt stock-still. Now they’re back to it. And how. 

“Yeesh,” blurts Richie, the sound of Eddie chiding him ringing in his ears before it even happens. “That was quick, eh?” 

“I guess when you’re in love you know it,” Eddie replies. Richie hums this time. Bites back the “Don’t be so sure unless you’ve been there, Spaghetti” resting on his tongue. 

Goes with a, “Or they’re both spectacularly eager and fertile.” 

It startles a laugh out of Eddie; Eddie’s blushed-face, hand-in-front-of-his-mouth, low giggle. 

“Another curse broken, I suppose,” Eddie finally says back, cloaked in scandalized mirth. 

Richie scoffs. “Not the one we would have preferred.” 

Eddie stays quiet. Richie’s heart rockets up to his throat, so he swallows it back down and replaces it with words.

“Unless you’re looking for some whipper-snappers to fill that big house of your mother’s after all, Eddie Spaghetti. Finally found the right lady to steal your affections and have your babies?” Richie stares back out at the waves. Thinks of dredging down to the beach and taking big, gulping steps until the water fills his lungs. Maybe then he’d finally be able to stop talking. 

But Eddie somehow gets even quieter. Richie digs into the silence, tries to listen more carefully, as if perhaps he’s just gone temporarily deaf. And just when he opens his mouth to start imitating Captain Kirk’s scanner for signs of life, Eddie’s throat clears. 

“I, uh.” Richie waits. He always _waits_ for this guy. “I’m not— there’s just a lot going on over here.” 

“Right, right, of course.”

“It’s not that I’m— it’s just—”

“A lot,” Richie finishes. He doesn’t really want to know more than that. He thought Eddie was moving out of his mother’s house — he talked about it nearly every day after he woke up. Maybe that’s his a _lot_. Maybe it encompasses most of the a _lot_. 

“Right,” huffs Eddie, gratefully, clearly not willing to give much more. 

A pause settles over them, and it itches at the very center of Richie’s spine. In that place he can never reach, no matter how long the back-scratcher, or the nails on the dame he asks to scratch it. They’ve never had this kind of relationship: long-distance, things said over the phone, things said without seeing each other face to face. And conversation when you can’t see the other person feels somehow… lesser. 

And Richie doesn’t want lesser.

He wants Eddie. But that’s far too— It’s just _too_ . And Richie knows all about too _anything_. He’s too everything. 

“Well, if you ever get a second away from all the madness you can always come down here.” All the air shoots out of him in one dramatic puff. “Over here. It’s a plane ride, either way, so I guess I don’t know what direction you’d end up going.” 

Eddie pauses again. Richie tries not to have a coronary. 

“To California?” he finally says, and Richie feels the blood flowing through his lungs again. Are those his fingers? Fancy that. 

“Yep, yeah, last I checked that’s where I’m set up.” Richie stretches his arms. Does a little spin. Feels like a fool with no one watching. 

Feels like a bigger fool when Eddie comes back on line, his voice low, his tone somber.

“I’m just not sure, Richie,” he says, and Richie imagines him twirling his own phone cord, biting his lip, the lips Richie swept over with his thumb in the hospital, when they— 

“Hey, that’s fine,” he says quickly, and it feels more like protection than agreement.

“It’s not that I don’t—”

“No, I get it,” Richie interrupts, the walls closing tight around him, the framed Picasso on the wall staring him crookedly in the eye. “You have things and _stuff_ and responsibilities, and maybe some ladies, but we don’t have to get into that.” 

Eddie sighs again. This time, it’s heavier. “Richie—”

“Spaghetti, my liege, may I request you keep me in royal loop so I don’t go completely loopy and forget the hub of nicknames I’ve collected? Wouldn’t want to forget those— again, um.” He’s floundering. He considers hanging up mid-sentence. But Eddie crackles on the other end.

“I’ll call in a couple weeks, Richie.”

“Sounds like some semblance of a plan.” 

“I won’t forget you,” he says, like it’s simple. Like he can guarantee it. And Richie waits. Waits for the more that isn’t coming. “Bye, Richie.” 

“Auf wiedersehn, dear Eddie.”

And he hangs up.

And he waits. 

* * *

  
All mistakes start at the first marriage. They usually have novelty in that way. When you really learn how incompatible you are with other humans. 

Carol was nice enough. They shacked up quick and easy; she was impressed with his dreams of being an actor; he was impressed with her pouty lips and easy laughter. When he got famous — real, honest to god, guest starring on Carson famous — he was doing the late night circuits on what felt like a never-ending loop. Carol was funny, she was a laugh, but not one to workshop jokes with. She couldn’t really keep up. Richie didn’t blame her — he talked a lot. Too much. Too much for her, in particular, when it came down to it. 

She hadn’t heard the one advising against youthful marriage until it went live that night.

He didn’t even have a chance to explain that one. She was gone by the time he got home.

* * *

  
The waiting lasts longer than he wants, although another day would probably have been too much.

The phone rings a lot, but it’s barely ever Eddie. 

It’s his manager. It’s a job. It’s a fair-weather friend who heard about his stint in Maine and wants the scoop. It’s his sister inviting him over. It’s his sister again, just checking he’s actually coming over. It’s the weird, empty, heavy-breathing calls he gets from that one gal who’s been stalking him since ‘85. 

It’s Beverly.

“Well, well, well, I never thought I’d hear from the spectacular dame herself.”

“Oh, don’t put on an act, Richie, you practically forgot who I was until a moment ago.” 

He waves a hand in the air, as if she can see it, as if that will erase the last two minutes, when he struggled to bring up her name, her face, even the familiarity of her voice on the other end of the line. 

“No skirting the truth, my dear,” he says. She laughs. Giggles. It reminds him of Eddie. 

He still can’t forget Eddie. Why hasn’t he forgotten Eddie? 

Richie loves Bev more than any wife he’s ever seen sauntering down the aisle toward him. And not like that, but perhaps once; perhaps when they were young and untethered, though they’ve always been, haven’t they? But he forgot her. 

“It’s been too long,” she says, solemnly, but he imagines her cheeks rosy and fond anyway. 

“Few months,” he agrees.

“You remember them all?”

Richie hems and haws. “I have my bad days and my good. I’m prone to blame it on aging, though I doubt the immediate recollection like a punch to the gut is another symptom of dementia.” 

“Probably not.” He missed her. Even when the shadow cast her real dim. “Though it’s not the same with Ben and I.” 

Richie’s temple pounds, the clear vision of Eddie’s glasses like a spike to the brain. He ignores it.

“Yes, I’ve heard some salacious rumors from about, oh—” Mike called him last week. Bill, too. They all knew. “Everyone.”

Bev laughs quietly. “Oh?”

“And I’m sitting over here, alone in my mansion, sipping champagne and living in the height of my lonesome luxury, wondering why Miss Marsh has avoided giving me the jovial news herself?”

“It’s Mrs. Hanscom now, actually,” she corrects, and that stuns him a bit, too. No one mentioned a _wedding_ , though now he does recall a few bastard jokes gone unacknowledged by the humorless Denbrough last week. 

“And no invite to the wedding, either? Or are we talking a—” he winds up and punches out a _BANG! BANG!_ “—type situation here?” 

“You’re horrible,” she gasps through her bubbling laughter. “I’m not sure why I missed you at all, but _yes_ , we had a little ceremony. It was fast, but the baby came later, hand over my heart.”

“So no ulterior motives on the rush? Or were you really trying to send us all a message?” It’s a little too genuine, but there is a sting, being left out. The rest of them missing it is a needed balm, though an admittedly selfish one. 

“No, no messages, just… caution.” 

“Ah,” he pings. “Worried about the great unknown stretched out beyond you.”

“And if it included all of our memories, I suppose.” 

Richie’s twirling at his cord again. He suddenly reminds himself of a stock photo on one of those obnoxiously pink little board games for girls. He might as well belly-flop onto the ground and start kicking his legs in the air. 

“Well we can all chalk it up to romantic optimism.” 

Bev hums, agreeably. “That’s a new one, coming from you.”

“Ha!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone know you’re becoming a corny old man.” 

“No, no, don’t you ruin my young and hip reputation. Did I tell you they offered me a dentures commercial last week? All the kiddies will be lining up for the autographs before you know it.” 

“Truly terrible out there for a man of your age, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,” Richie grumbles, not so sarcastically. He’d said yes to the commercial, truth be told. He didn’t exactly pass his last dentist appointment with flying colors, and now that he’s attempting to take better care of himself, he’s rather quick to put aside shame in favor of a realistic vision of a mouth full of pearly white teeth to keep shining at the cameras. It’s not a _hair piece_ , for God’s sake. 

“Well I hope the schedule on the commercial’s flexible,” she says, and Richie’s spine straightens in an instant. 

“Bevvy, are you trying to ask me out? You’re a married woman now, girl!” 

“I guess we could consider it a group date, if Bill can get over from London fast enough.” 

Richie freezes. “F-fast… are you having a _party_?” 

“Does seven constitute a party?” she giggles, and Richie’s heart nearly stops. 

“Eight, if you count the one leeching off you,” he mumbles, but all he can see is wide, brown eyes, rimless glasses, a bright, wide smile—

“—we were hoping sometime next month, but like I said, it’s all up to Bill. And _you_ , of course, though you’ve got heaps of money like the rest of us, so I assumed it wouldn’t be an issue, unless you’re the new Denture Mascot.” 

“One commercial and I’m already type-cast.” 

His head spins. Next _month_. All of his friends? Together again, and so soon? He’d started to think — when he could think, when his mind was free and clear of all the forgetting, when he could really recall them at his best — that it might never happen again. But this: this buds a little bit of hope in his chest. Plants a little seed he might be willing to tend and let grow. 

And Eddie. He could actually see Eddie. Instead of waiting around for him to call and never putting up to pick up the phone himself. Bev must hear his concerted silence. 

“I just talked to Eddie — he said he’d do his best to be there, but no promises.” Disappointment crackles through Richie. His _best_. But seeing everyone else is just as much of a prize. “That’s all we can hope for, really. When we’re all spread around the country like this.”

“And our memories keep trying to zap each other away,” Richie adds. It really cramps his style — it’s hard enough making plans, much less the effort to _remember_ there’s anyone to make them with in the first place. 

Bev ignores him. “Have you talked to him?”

Richie opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

“Eddie, I mean?” 

Oh, he knows what she means. 

“We’ve, uh. We’ve… yes. We’ve talked.” He feels caught off-guard. Why he thought Bev would ignore the Eddie Issue is beyond him. “He called a few weeks ago. Or was it a month? I’m getting old, like you said.” 

“Uh huh.” 

“Anyway, the party sounds like a rootin’ and tootin’ good time, but I’m sure that’s not what the kids would call it these days. Rad? Heavy?” Master of deflection, that Richie Tozier. Should’ve been a lawyer. Rude of Bev to derail away from her wedding, really. “You tell me a date and a time and I’ll be there, love. And you don’t have to offer me the honor of giving a toast, I’m already workshopping my shotgun slash bastard child material.”

“Oh, lord,” she giggles. “I’ll have to keep a stopwatch, see how far you can get without a beep beep from the groom.” 

Richie throws his head back with a laugh. “Haystack’ll have much better things to worry about than lonely ol’ me.” 

He winces. Even with someone who knows him so well (when she knows him), it’s a bit too on the nose. 

“No new wives to keep you busy?” she asks, tossing him a softball. Thank God for small miracles. 

“ _Wives_? What is this, a harem?” He’s had only a little overlap, thank you very much. 

“Interests, then! Courters.” Her voice pitches sultry. “Ladies in _wait_.” 

“Wait a minute here, girly, I said _denture_ commercials, not 1-900’s.” 

“Oh, please,” she chides, and he’s worried she’s not going to give it up. His palms start leaking like he’s just come off camera, the adrenaline all crashing down on his body now that he knows the whole gig is up. 

But then she says, softly, “I’m just excited to get the whole gang back together again. I think we’re all… better somehow. When we have each other.” 

Richie’s memory is a fickle thing these days, or maybe it’s just the awareness that leaves him wanting. Now that he knows the gaps are there, he feels them like an absence instead of a vague, staticky mess. The things he does remember, with startling clarity, is the sense of rightness he left behind in Derry. 

And he’s certainly not bound to blame it on the Derry Air.

“Hard to argue with that, sweetheart.” 

It’s the company.

“I’ll get you the details when we have it all set, Rich.” 

“Thanks, doll.”

Richie hangs up the phone, counts to ten, and presses his eyes shut.

“Ben, Bev, Mike, Bill, and—” 

But the company’s the tricky part.

“—The Interest.” 

* * *

“You’re going,” says Annie, and Richie almost leaves on the spot. He gets around to visiting his sister three or four times a year, not including Thanksgiving, and he finds the winter quarter to be her most ornery.

Today, she’s hunched over the counter, her spine a curved mess of haste. When he arrived she was dumping pre-made potato salad into her own bowl, mixing furiously, intent on fooling her daughter’s peers (and presumably, more importantly, her peers’ parents) that she has enough time to boil her own potatoes. Richie is confused as to why she has to bring anything at all. How long does a game of tee-ball go, anyway? You need _snacks_ now? Is Isabelle technically playing sports? She’s six. 

Richie’s shoulders slump. He spins an orbit on her kitchen stool. “Is tee-ball technically a sport?” Annie spins her own violent orbit to glare at him. He raises his hands in defeat. “Just wondering!”

“We’re talking about your _reunion_ , Richard.” 

Richie’s body recoils. “Please lay off the Richard’s and the Richie Wentworth Tozier’s, I’m really just—”

“I’ll call you whatever I want when you’re being absolutely obtuse!” 

“Alright, alright, proceed.” He jerks his hips back and forth to simulate the Twist. Roll over, Beethoven, he’s still got _something_ going for him! “You were what I assume is halfway through a list of why I’m apparently flying across the country to attend a reunion with people you barely remember.” 

“I _remember_ them,” she hisses, back to the potatoes. “They were small and you talked about them all summer.”

He frowns. “We were rather small back then, but that’s hardly grounds to discriminate.” 

And how did she— they’ve never talked about his friends before. Now it’s as if a little cabinet, unknown to her for most of her adult life, has opened and spilled out mundane secrets regarding her brother’s childhood adventures. And a few gems about their trips to the fair as a family, which Richie would rather put behind that ol’ clown lock and key again. 

“That makes no sense.” She brushes a piece of hair from her face, the rest tied up by purple scrunchie into a ponytail. The rotation of her mixing switches. Thorough. “But ever since Samantha left you’ve been—”

“I _certainly_ don’t need to remember Samantha. Did I come here for you to make me sad? Is that the name of this game now?” 

“Since when are you ever sad about your conquests?”

“That’s it.” Richie makes a show of getting out of his chair. Brushes off his pants. Pulls at where his jacket hangs over his shoulders. “I’m calling it. You’re not helping here.”

Annie doesn’t turn around. “Sit down, you’re not either.” 

He almost leaves. He really almost does. 

But then he grows all the sense back in his head and plops back down. Annie turns this time, but just to smirk at him.

“You’re my least favorite sister,” he reminds her. Mary lives in Nevada — they see her for holidays only, and right now, that’s the kind of support Richie needs. The absent kind.

“You’re nervous,” she says back. His mouth sputters; he wipes the resulting saliva away from the counter before she can see. “Don’t spray it.” 

“Will you give me one mere sliver of a break here? Cut me some slack? For your adoring baby brother, _please_? Can’t you tell I’m in turmoil here?” 

“Why on God’s green earth did you come to me if you wanted pity? You could have called up mom, or one of your exes, or maybe just picked up a new one and—”

She whirls back around. Stares. Her eyes flick up and down, like she’s sizing him up. Richie squirms. 

“Are you pricing me for the tee-ball auction?”

The bowl slips down to settle on the counter. A hand presses to her hip. 

“There’s going to be someone there. That’s why you’re nervous.” 

Whether he would acknowledge it or not — this is why he’s here. Annie can see through him like no one else can, not even his manager, and that might have saved him a few years in stress after his second divorce. But he waves her off. 

“There are going to be seven somebodies there — that’s how parties work; there are other people, you drink, you eat, you have a rip roaring good time and then you go home and regret every decision you made. Easy peasy.”

That’s how they work. Honesty. Denial. Honesty. Further denial. Yelling. Acceptance. The five Tozier stages of getting the truth out of you

She keeps staring. Richie almost tips over on his stool, glancing at the door for this escape.

“Someone there you _like_. That, uh.” Her hand flicks in circles. A dollop of mayonnaise follows. Richie ducks exaggeratedly. “Bev— uh. Beverly!” 

“A plus on recollection, F minus on viable options.” He cracks his knuckles against his thigh. “It’s her wedding.” 

She frowns. “I thought you said it was a reunion!” 

“They’re already married, but none of us were able to be there for the ceremony, so I guess it’s a do-over. Apology. A technicality, really.” 

“Sounds romantic,” she teases. Richie balks.

“I’ll have you know their love reconnection is rather—” he stops short, his spine prickling with recognition. “It’s the reason for the season, is what I’m saying, but I’ve decided after being here that perhaps a flight might do me some good.” 

“Chicago?”

“Righty-o.” 

They watch each other.

“Glad to help,” she says, slowly. She squints. “Is that— do you need something else?” She looks around. Glances at her wrist-watch. Richie’s forehead hits the counter with a resounding _thunk_. 

“It’s a thing,” he admits. Sucks air through his nose. He’s never _talked_ about this before. Not out loud. Certainly not sober. And never about Eddie. “It’s something of a thing but not a thing I’m willing to discuss.” 

“Right,” she answers. “You just wanted to sit here and mope and then leave me in the lurch.” She points down to the bowl.

“What? You wanted some potato labor in return?” 

She shrugs. “You could make yourself useful.” 

Richie huffs a giant sigh, flopping his limbs off the stool and over to where she’s standing at the counter. Their hips collide in a friendly samba and he grumbles down at the potatoes. Like sister, like brother. Thankfully, she slides over a bowl of unwashed lettuce instead.

“You’re on salad duty.” 

He laughs and gets to it.

* * *

Jessica, the blonde, the second, the dynamo (although weren’t they all, they still are, they—) stuck around but a minute longer. She didn’t talk much before the wedding. Richie did all the talking for them.

He didn’t clock that until much later.

On the honeymoon, the waitress popped a bottle of champagne and made some well-meaning but very ill-advised comment about hoping Jessica wasn’t “with child.”

Before Jessica’s face was a full shade of pink, Richie yelped a panicked “well gee, I hope not” and her face fell faster than a man plunging off a diving board. 

She stuck around longer, but oh, he saw the change. Talked through it. Pretended not to. But she couldn’t recover, and neither could he.  
  


* * *

Richie spends most of his time on the plane trying not to vomit. 

The ride is smooth, but his stomach pitches a fit nonetheless. He waves away the stewardess whenever she checks on him. Points to his little paper bag and laughs it off. Promises to jaunt to the cramped bathroom for a true emergency.

Before he knows it, he’s face to face with a lesser-bearded Ben Hanscom on the west side of Chicago in a snazzy little bar. Ben sweeps him into a hug, and Richie has no choice but to peer over his shoulder and bear down and pretend he doesn’t feel everything suddenly slot into place as he catches a glimpse of the rest of his friends all piled together at a table. There’s the beautiful bride shooting him a wink. Mike holding his bubbly drink aloft in toast to his arrival. Bill and his wife, whose alert, peppy, sparkly exterior might have thrown him, (a marginal difference from the last time he saw her) if not for her seatmate— a smiling, three-piece suit-clad Eddie Kaspbrak.

Eddie’s sitting, back ram-rod straight in his chair, tugging gently at a button on his jacket, one leg stretched out in front of him, an absolute beauty in light blue. Richie’s eyes rake over the wavy blonde curls and brass cuff links and suddenly he wishes his plane had gone down over the Bible Belt. 

Richie sneaks over to the table, shrugging his jacket down his shoulders to show off the red bow tie. It’s nothing compared to Eddie’s knock-out suit, but then again, what would be? 

“Richie,” Eddie gasps with an absent laugh.

“You clean up nice, Spaghetti,” Richie hears himself say. His hand lands on Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie gapes up at him when he squeezes, and Richie will swear up and down Chicago experiences a rare earthquake, all centered under his own feet. At least a 5, he’d say, though he’s sure they’ll report it in the paper tomorrow. A rarity in these parts, but Eddie Kaspbrak has always been a modern marvel. 

Eddie flubs over a response, his lips miming the shape of words but with nothing coming out. Richie reluctantly lets his hand drift away, but not before ruffling at the mop on Eddie’s head. Everyone else grins up at him, too, though the Richter scale isn’t quite as applicable when Richie’s eyes aren’t on Eddie. 

“The party can start now that the Trashmouth is here, huh?” He palms at his chest, smoothing his shirt down as he takes the only empty seat available. Right next to Eddie. 

“It’ll certainly be louder,” Mike jokes. 

“And what is a good party if not _loud_?” Richie asks. Bev raises her glass, and the others follow in a lazy round. 

Her eyes touch on all of them before Richie catches the watery shine in them; but her voice is steady when she toasts. 

“To us,” she says, simply. 

“To _you_ ,” adds Eddie, his glass, foaming at the rim, tilted dangerously toward the happy couple. Bev and Ben trade conspiratorial smiles as the rest follow Eddie’s lead. 

When their glasses clink, it sets Richie’s heart loose through his chest. It ping pongs around, dinging painfully at his ribs. Eddie glitters over at him. They’re so close, their knees huddled up under the table, their elbows connected at the point, their own right angles. Richie wants to gather them all up, Eddie in the center, a bear-hug like Ben, kiss their cheeks like Bev, press into them all at once so they can feel it, too. They must, already. 

They break for conversation and catching up and Richie lets his mouth run to keep from doing what comes naturally — staring at Eddie.

It’s familiar, and endless, and easy, and the hardest thing he’s ever done. He doesn’t shut up. But neither does Eddie. 

He forgot how easy it was. But he didn’t forget Eddie. 

“You’re looking just as shiny and bushy-tailed as ever, Eddie, darling,” Richie says, dawdling with a piece of Eddie’s hair. It’s soft, just like the rest of him, but Richie banishes that thought as soon as it comes, and then Eddie flaps his hand until Richie leaves him alone. He tucks the strand up with the rest of its friends on the top of Eddie’s head. 

They’re alone at the table, the stragglers wandering around their room in uneven pairs now that dinner is over. 

“You keep _saying_ that,” Eddie blushes, and Richie feels marginally caught. Eddie leans back, stretching his arms above his head with a yawn. “I’m all the better for being here.” 

“Oh?” Richie’s brows shoot due north. “I bring out the shining light in you, huh?” Backing up. Backing way the hell up. “Or is it just being in the presence of twu wuv?” 

The creases in Eddie’s forehead wiggle something fierce. He steeples his fingers tightly over the napkin in his lap. A splotch of mustard still sits there from where his salmon had splattered, a rogue flail as a result of Richie’s Nancy Reagan story — that one always kills, especially in the liberal crowds. Eddie had scrubbed at his jacket for a full minute before Bev poured club soda on him. Now the jacket is a lovely blue-cum-dijon over one of the lapels, but Richie’s always liked modern art. 

Eddie turns to shoot him a look, and the amber of his irises reflect the party lights beautifully.

Richie always liked brown eyes. 

“I like being with everyone,” Eddie says, quietly. Richie swallows. He’s been so quiet, since. 

Since the last time they were all like this— clustered together, hanging onto something fleeting. It’s all an absurd echo of last summer. But today the joy isn’t edged with terror; it’s a signal of something new. Something beyond the foggy, forgotten history that still has its claws dug in beyond their control. 

Bev and Ben are swaying gently on a dance floor to a low thrum of Etta James. Bill and Mike are watching on, with Audra seated between them at the end of the bar. They’re all rosy-cheeked and fond eyes. None of them are waiting for the other shoe to drop. They’re all together now. Again. Richie feels it, deep in whatever’s realistically where his soul should be, since he’s not sure he believes in them. Even if he does, he sold his away two marriages ago, and from what little he knows about religion, it’s not something he’s able to barter back on a pretty penny. Though he has plenty of those. No, this is more like a piece of his heart. At least that’s where he feels it. Dead center in his chest. 

He’s prone to blame the gin, until he sees Eddie watching him out of the corner of his eye. He flushes.

It’s probably not the gin.

“Hard to argue with that.” Richie shakes at his drink, vibrating with the panic of being on the verge of _talking_. “But I do object to an empty glass at a party, so I’m off to the bar.” 

“Oh,” he hears Eddie say as he’s dashing away.

Ben takes a break from sweating it out with his bride to join Richie at the bar, and Richie ignores the way Eddie vaults out of his seat to fill in for the absence. He turns to greet Ben instead.

The non-groom’s shining with the utter bliss of a newly-married man. Richie presses his drink tight to his chest to keep from throwing it in Ben’s face. There’s a deep valley between their experiences, and Richie’s about to belly flop into the bottom and bust his head open on a rock. He needs a funnel for his energy: a useless rant in favor of admitting something he certainly could not take back. 

“The dress code here was not crystal clear,” says Richie, pointing around the room to the mixing pot of different outfits. Ben rumbles a laugh, his eyes following Richie’s extravagant gestures.

“Mike’s still got his librarian chic thing going, which,” he presses a hand to his chest, “I’m not complaining about.” It’s a little orange, but Richie’s not going to say it out loud. He has _some_ filter, even if it’s hard to come by.

“I can already tell you’re bursting about this,” Ben mumbles into his drink, his simple tonic, his _good_ behavior drink, now that he’s got a woman and a baby to add to his pile of impressive, spherical awards and a Time cover photoshoot. Full of himself, that Hanscom. 

Richie empties his glass and taps toward the bartender. Full of whiskey, that Tozier.

“Denbrough’s decked out in purple and denim — who would think that’s acceptable for a wedding, no one knows.”

“Richie,” Ben warns, but peters out there, which Richie takes to mean he agrees. Silence is nothing but tacit endorsement, if his records are correct.

“Your bride’s swerved into the oncoming traffic of tradition and gone all-white, which I always thought was a faux-pas this time of year.” 

Ben beams in her direction, as if the very mention of her has reminded him of her existence — of their loving and mint-in-box _marriage_ , and Richie feels the familiar stomach-rolling all over again. 

Bev is beautiful, a vision in a white, as Richie would have always imagined her on her wedding day, if he’d given it that much thought. In truth, Richie didn’t think of weddings often until Carol sprung a big one on him. But Richie always thought of Bev as one of the guys. 

She just fit in so _well_ , even if her cheek kisses flushed his face, but who’s to say a kiss from Eddie wouldn’t have done the same thing? And what broad in her right mind would wanna chum around with six boys if she didn’t fit in? One that wears a white pant-suit to her impromptu, second-wedding-in-a-restaurant with her childhood friends, that’s who. But Richie’s eyes aren’t searching for details in her golden broach, or her perfectly mussed hair, or the way her belly pops ever so slightly against the silky white fabric. He’s stuck on the blonde, lanky, strawberry red-cheeked beauty swirling her gingerly around the floor. 

Eddie’s not much of a dancer, that much is obvious. He shakes his head the couple times he steps on the tip of her toes, but holds on tight with his longer fingers, entwined with hers, keeping her safe and connected. Richie imagines his own hands there, in Bev’s place, tucked neatly against Eddie, their feet bouncing and shuffling and swapping to avoid each other. He imagines Eddie’s blonde hair tucked against his shoulder, tickling at his lips like his mustache’s gone too long without trimming. He imagines seating charts and cake tastings and hydrangeas versus roses and jokes about his fifth time down the aisle but the first time he’s ever made an effort. He imagines Eddie with a white tie and a flashy new ring and he can’t keep his trap shut any longer.

“How’d you know?” he blurts, hoping he doesn’t have to explain himself. 

Ben’s face flinches, but he barely gives it pause. “You’ve been married.”

Richie frowns. “Yeah, and that’s why I’m askin’.” Ben watches him carefully, sipping at his tonic.

“You never knew?” 

Richie shakes his head. “Not for sure. Not until—” He flexes his fingers against the bar. “I thought I knew. Quite a few times.” 

“Four.”

“No need to get technical, sonny boy, but you’re not far off.” 

“I’m right on the money,” Ben scoffs. Richie squints an eye toward him, his other one drifting down the long stretch of Eddie’s leg where he’s trying to dip Bev. 

“You writing a biography or something?” 

Ben’s smile spreads thin under his beard. “Nah, I’m still leaving the writing to the Purple People Eater over there.” 

“Right,” huffs Richie, deep into his second drink (since he’s hit the bar) and already contemplating his third. Eddie does a flourish on the dance floor, landing on his heel and wiggling his fingers in the air. Richie stays quiet. 

Ben grunts. “Really? No one-eyed snake jokes? I feel like that was the natural progression, especially with Bill involved.” But Richie’s mesmerized. Hypnotized. Stupefied. Full of whiskey-drunk, flowery thoughts of Eddie in his life like this always, goofing off while Richie makes small talk. Smiling and happy while Richie floats on images of them together. 

It’s all a farce, unless he does something about it. 

“When you knew—” Richie continues, ignoring the previous line of questioning, but Ben cuts him off at the source.

“I am the last person you want to ask romantic advice from, Rich.” Ben turns his back to the bar, hiking his elbows up onto the table and letting his head fall back between his shoulder blades. Richie watches him, hunched in the opposite direction, unable to stomach the floor show any longer lest he physically burst. He thought the sight of Eddie in a suit would do him in; turns out Eddie dancing is an even bigger threat to his health and sanity. 

“And why’s that? No unsuccessful marriages. No abandoned kiddies out there, blaming you for their personality quirks. Good career, good money, good home, good god let’s eat, you’ve got it all!” 

Ben shakes his head, the wry smile stuck in place, like he’s pulling one over on the world. 

“You know better than me all o’ that means nothing without the people that make it important.” 

“ _Friendship_ ,” Richie moans, already feeling guilty about his tone. 

“Yeah,” says Ben, revving up to scold, “friendship is important. Don’t tell me you’re thinking otherwise— I’ve seen the look on your face, old man, and I might not know you as well as I’d like but I know enough to tell when you’re happy.” 

Richie’s lips sputter cynical droplets of whiskey onto the bar.

“You don’t know the half of it,” he says, low and dangerous. He’s one drink from giving himself away, but maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing. He’s starting to think it might be better than whatever this is: favoring a pathetic pity party over the _actual_ party happening around him. 

Ben throws an arm around Richie’s shoulders, shaking him gently in what Richie assumes is an attempt at encouragement. Richie watches Eddie return to his seat at the table. 

“I’d be happy to hear the whole story as soon as you’re ready to tell it, Rich,” Ben whispers in his ear. “But maybe we should join the rest of them before I well and truly become a pumpkin.” 

He takes his leave then, filing into one of the empty chairs with the rest of them. Richie settles for a few more seconds at the bar, watching them go at it. They all watch each other, really, as if they can’t believe they’re really there. Their memories are a rough, surreal paddling pool of confusion and fog, so their time together is special — even Richie knows that. All the shoulds in the world wouldn’t stop him from feeling something overwhelming for Eddie. But he can’t deny his friends in the process. 

Richie shimmies back to the table, ready to start again, ready to even tell his truth, if the conversation bends that way. Who is he to deny these people from the real him? 

Then he catches where the conversation has headed without him. 

“Oh, I’m not sure he’d want to meet anyone,” Eddie’s saying. 

“Why not?” Mike pushes. “If he’s your guy he should be proud to show you off!” 

Richie’s legs go full jelly at the implications, so he plops into his chair. 

“He’s not my _guy_ ,” Eddie objects, eyes darting to where Richie’s now seated, but Ben is already turning to Mike.

“Wouldn’t Eddie be the one doing the showing?” 

Mike’s lips press together. “Either way, we’d love to meet anyone important to you, Eddie.” 

Richie’s insides turn to liquid. What did he _miss_ while he was pining over there with Mr. Marsh? Eddie’s cheeks are a hue of rosy Richie remembers from middle school, when Linda Durham asked him to the dance and Bill and Stan shook at his shoulders until he ran to the bathroom to hide. Richie scoots out his chair an inch in preparation for Eddie’s mad dash, but instead he fixes his glasses on his face and leans forward. 

“He’s a great friend,” says Eddie, and it’s hardly a relief. “He’s always been my right-hand man with the business, and when my mom got sick he—”

“Your mom is sick?” Richie interrupts, and Eddie nods solemnly.

“Soon as I got home.” 

This time, it might be Richie who makes a mad dash to the bathroom. 

“Oh, Eddie, I’m so sorry,” Bev says, reaching a hand out, but too far to touch. “I had no idea it was so soon after… everything.” 

“How’s she doing now?” asks Mike. Richie’s glad for the company, because he’s dumbstruck. And doesn’t he know that trick? Sonia Kaspbrak was always coming down with something just when Eddie wanted a little freedom. Eyes pallid and dulling, Eddie doesn’t look like he’s far from taking it all very seriously. He curls his fingers through his hair, sweeping it back into place from where Richie’s hands messed it up earlier. 

“A little better. She’s home now, but she needs care around the clock.” 

“She always was a needy lass,” Richie murmurs.

“Richie,” warns Bev, quick, but Eddie’s only a second behind, nudging his elbow into Richie’s. 

“Her constant horning reminds me of someone else I know,” Eddie says, and the table erupts in laughter — a surge of nervous energy that’s finally found a suitable socket to sink into. 

“A Mrs. K comparison, I’m sure Richie takes kindly to that,” Bill says. He wipes at his mouth as Audra holds him tightly around the shoulder. She’s sporting a shaky smile to match Richie’s. 

“You know they say couples start to look alike the longer they’ve been together,” Richie says, trying to save some of his dignity and missing the mark by about fifty feet. “And it’s been a good forty years for me and Mrs. K. We’re practically twins!” 

Eddie’s eyes sallow in the light, but he throws Richie a pity smile. “Anyway, Joey’s just been helping me get back on my feet.” 

Back on his _feet_? Richie quite literally did exactly the same thing months ago, and this is the thanks he gets? Being replaced? And when he was actually remembered this time? Richie crosses his legs under the table and tries not to steam like a vegetable. No one’s pierced his bag — he’s in danger of blowing this whole restaurant to bits from the pressure.

“Well I’m glad you have someone to take care of you over there,” Bev tells him, staring at Ben wistfully. “I wish we could be a little closer. All of us.” 

“I’ve been looking into buying another plot of land someday, you know,” says Ben, scratching over his bare chin. “If you’re ever interested in migrating a few hundred miles to the West.” 

Cold sweeps through Richie’s limbs, but Eddie gives a small, polite laugh. 

“I thought I might be willing to, after everything, but— no, not. Um. Not right now at least.” He shifts his thighs on the seat, lifting from where they were pressed over his hand, his knuckles baring a red imprint from the pressure. Richie watches it instead of Eddie’s face. He doesn’t want to think about what that means. 

He doesn’t want to think about what happened. 

Ben seems appeased, for now. He bares his teeth like it’s something he’ll tuck away to nag over later, but fades it out with a smile in Eddie’s direction. Eddie must feel the shine.

“I’d sure love to be near you all, though,” he says, softly. 

Bev hums. “Maybe when your mom is feeling a little better.” Eddie’s hand shakes out; he rubs at his palm. Over the red marks. Richie’s eyes float up to his, and Eddie’s hand floats in the air. 

“Maybe,” he says, right to Richie. 

Richie bites his lip and doesn’t say anything.

* * *

This time, Richie finally catches his red-eye home.

He’s the first to leave after the happy couple, so he figures that cashes in at least a few etiquette points, right? Bev and Ben make a show of it and all — pretending to usher themselves off to some sort of honeymoon in Ben’s shiny limo, even though everyone knows they’re headed home to their shared high-rise. Richie wonders how much they make combined. Richie wonders if that sort of thing matters to either of them anymore. 

Richie’s been wondering that about himself, too. 

The rest of them meander around for a beat. Collecting their things, closing out the bar, making the last they can of chit-chat before they’re flown about the States and each other’s memories. Richie watches the clock and the room, cornered between desperation to talk and fear of letting anyone hear. Again. Plus he’s got a plane to catch, and he’s due out the door in, oh, T-minus two minutes. At the final moment he sees Eddie, fresh out of a jovial goodbye embrace from Bill, purple overlapping blue as their suits bid adieu. 

Eddie’s body straightens in Richie’s sights, his shoulders shaking out until they’re sloped correctly. A sharp peak of the nape of his neck, if Richie looks just right, and Richie wants to press the palm of his hand to it, like he did as a kid— like he did _last time_ , but then he remembers Eddie’s vague refusal the last time he was invited back to the sunshine state. And then he thinks of Eddie’s _fella_ , even if Eddie won’t cop to it fully. Richie knows that look— even if he’s never seen it on Eddie. Boo-hoo, indeed. But there’s someone. So Richie hikes a hand in a dangling, pathetic wave, and Eddie’s eyes pop open past the whites for just a moment, like he’s thinking better of it, like he’s realizing this is really Richie’s goodbye, and raises his hand to wave back. 

One, two, tiddle-dee-doo. Richie’s out the door. 

* * *

So Richie started talking to someone else. 

Terry was… well. She wasn’t Jessica. And that’s all Richie had been looking for in a woman at the time. She was well-dressed, did the same amount of cocaine as him, wasn’t intimidated by the Hollywood types, and didn’t complain about the pastel-blocked carpets he brought home after a night of drinking and rubbing elbows with fancy designers (Could one of them have ever been Bev? Would he have known?).

But a life of looking around for something better got the best of him. And they say marriages that begin with infidelity are destined to end that way. And perhaps there were other strings of destiny at play. 

When Terry accused him he didn’t deny it, didn’t correct her, just let her believe what she wanted to believe. Because even he couldn’t believe it until he got back to Derry. Until he walked into the room, sheened in sweat and ready to run, and saw the spitting image of the young model at the center of his affair, but instead as a dressed, upright man who smiled at him through dinner and reminded him of something he thought he’d forever left behind. 

“I knew this might happen,” she said, as if he hadn’t told her that same damn thing as they were making their way to the altar in Vegas after his quickie divorce. 

“Congratulations,” he told her, terrified she’d find out, but desperate for someone to know.

He watched her clutch two giant suitcases as she left.

* * *

  
  


The plan had been to stop at home after the airport. To drop off his measly little bag and get some shut-eye before a few meetings, and then a dinner out with a few of his “most amenable industry connections” to get him “back on track.” Quotes and words courtesy of his agent, thank you very much. Richie considers himself right on track. 

And that track leads him straight off the plane and into another bar. This one, however, is much more familiar. Turns out, the distance between two bars is just a hop, skip and a plane ride.

The owner lets him sit in the back corner where the neon busted years ago, sipping on whatever he fancies for as long as he likes— as long as he behaves. It’s the kind of thing Richie thinks must have some history; after all, he’s barely spoken two words to anyone other than the bartender for years. Cute boys approach, as they always do, but Richie’s throat dries up like it’s gin and tonic night whenever he looks to respond. 

Paul had been a fluke— they didn’t meet here, but at an industry party, where Richie’s guard was up and Paul’s were way down. But Paul is long gone. 

Just like Eddie. 

Back to New York, no doubt, Richie thinks bitterly, and then chats up the bartender on his way around the loop for refills before he thinks beyond to the chewy bit in the center. But it turns out he and Eddie aren’t that dissimilar in their… interests, after all. Other than the fact that Eddie’s interests include a very specific gentleman in New York and Richie’s interests include… Eddie. 

Eddie, ever soft and gentle, ever patient and loving, waiting all these years for someone who would really treat him right. Someone who would love and cherish him, for all of his days. And Richie, feeding the beast that claws from somewhere deep within him— following his eyes and ears and limbs and fevered lust and chasing everything away, in the end. 

Not even a patient, waiting Eddie could bear the likes of him. 

Richie stumbles out, and down, and around, well before the end of the night, but he’s getting up there, as they say, and can’t quite stomach two full nights in a row of drinking like he used to. Instead, he’s a…. Well, a few-more-than-one-and-done kind of guy, but certainly the type of man to bow out when the crowds start ramping up. Especially when he finds himself looking for familiar faces in the crowd. Faces he can’t quite pull up with clarity, but knows well enough he won’t find here.

He won’t find them again for a long while. 

That is, until he returns home to one— the clincher, the one that never fades, the _interest_ — testy and tapping, staring him down like the barrel of a gun when he returns to his front door, and Richie’s whole soul slips out through his feet until he’s no longer sure he’s standing on solid ground.

As Richie gets closer, squinting into the light — whether from the setting sun or just the shining deity of another’s presence — he sees Eddie rumpled in a beige suit, much less snazzy and well-fitted than his blue piece of heaven from the night before. His face is lined, his glasses slipped far down on his nose, like he’s forgotten to push them up in his time waiting. And how long _has_ he been waiting? 

Richie wets his lips and sets his heart aside. He’s had far too much to drink. 

“My, oh my, I didn’t expect any visitors at this hour!” Richie drawls, barely hiding the shake of his voice, or the slur, and now he’s definitely put all his cards on the table. Eddie stares at him like he’s seen a ghost, a far cry from the scrunched up look of anger Richie arrived to, but perhaps he’s surprised by how quickly the state of things took over. 

And Richie— _Richie_ is the one who should be keeled over from surprise! Such a beautiful, charming blonde on his stoop after he thought he was relegated to a life of queer silence in bars? He throws a cautious arm out, lest he fall right into the breadth of lilac bushes. 

“ _You stay out of those pricker bushes_ ,” he pitches in his mother’s voice, thick as syrup and not nearly as sweet. “Remember that classic, there, Spa—” 

It catches in his throat, the prospect of his own words dull in his mouth. 

“I remember it,” Eddie says anyway, throwing his arms out to catch where Richie might presumably fall, but Richie waves him away, the sound of his voice forcing a shiver down his spine.

Eddie huffs something quiet behind him, but his ears close up in favor of the touch on Richie’s hips, where Eddie’s precariously holding, as if the door might open and propel Richie unexpectedly forward and onto his face. His long fingers grip lightly, but Richie can still feel him there, burning imprints into him forever, but why is he even _here_? 

He lets Eddie inside first, throws his keys into the bowl Annie got him last Christmas and whirls on Eddie as soon as he’s steady and upright. The wall provides a little help.

“What brings the likes of you around these parts, huh?” His mouth is dry but his eyes are stuck on the twitch of Eddie’s face. He’s so _close_ , so… so here, and Richie is nothing but whiskey and fog, yet again. They really need to stop meeting like this. “I thought you’d have better business to take care of in the Big Apple.”

Eddie face contorts further; his lips are a crooked wiggle above his chin, his eyes are glassy and bold, his hair jags over his forehead until he reaches up to brush it out of the way. Richie wants to touch, and isn’t that always how it goes?

“Huh?” Richie pokes in the face of silence. “Tending to the sick and elderly?”

Eddie squares his hands back on his hips and points out toward his own bags, double the amount of Richie’s and much more demure, zip up and a deep purple, and Richie has a moment of startling remembrance that only flashes _Bill’s suit_ before Eddie takes a shuddering breath in. 

“I didn’t, um. I didn’t know how to tell everyone, I suppose.”

He’s wringing his hands. Richie stares out at the bags, sat innocently and listening. 

“Oh?” 

Eddie licks his lips and nods. “My mother— she, uh… well. She’s not—”

“Sick?” Richie provides, just as bile rises in his throat. He really shouldn’t have downed what was left in his glass before heading home. Always a rookie mistake. 

Eddie shifts a little on his feet. Richie wants to take hold of his shoulders and shake him, but then he looks… somber.

“No, um.”

“In New York?” Richie spooks with the thought, glancing hurriedly behind Eddie for a sign of her peeking out of his landscaping. “Because I know the place looks big from the outside, but I’m not sure Mrs. K would appreciate it.” 

“No, Richie, she’s not…” Eddie rolls his hands, clenching his long fingers together while his mouth hangs open. He looks so pale, even in the synthetic light of Richie’s foyer. Richie can’t bear the sight of him as much as he wants to soak in every glimpse.

“Not a fan of travel? Not a fan of yours truly? I think we knew that, Eddie, dear.” Richie ducks his head in a fake laugh. “Not in the--”

“Alive!” Eddie blurts, not unkindly, but certainly not quietly, either. His face reddening from the onslaught of Richie’s guesses. 

Richie peers out the door again, not that his neighbors are close, but it’s a suspicious word to be screaming into the night. Afternoon. Is it even _evening_? Richie’s ears start ringing. It’s then he remembers he’s well and truly blitzed. It’s then he realizes Eddie’s mother _passed away_ and here he is, slurring and laughing like an insensitive prick. 

“Buddy—” 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m—” Eddie laughs, a touch hysterical, taking steps outside to drag in his two bags. Richie gapes down at them before helping him along. They’re about the weight of two boulders, so call them both Sisyphus. 

They pull the bags into the kitchen while Richie closes the door behind them, ushering Eddie to the little table he keeps for guests, shoved into the corner like some haphazard breakfast nook. As if he lets them stay that long. But he’d let Eddie— He’d let Eddie do most anything. So he drags the old kettle out from behind the blender (and the stashed bottle of gin for emergencies) and gets to boiling some water. 

Eddie blows at the steam as soon as Richie places it in front of him, and they both busy themselves with finger fiddling and staring into the swirling abyss of tea before Richie finally gives in. 

“So by the look and _feel_ of those two cabins worth of luggage, I’d say you’re stay here is… dare I say, indefinite?” Richie shakes a finger at them in the corner, making congress with his own pathetic piece of carry-on, beginning to stain at the front edge from where he spilled his second drink at the bar. Serves him right for shoving it under his feet and calling it good enough.

Eddie frowns over at them until his eyes water, and Richie sets his cooling cup down to offer a hand out, his heart doing somersaults in his chest. 

“I didn’t know where else to _go_ , Richie,” he sobs, and Richie gives a comforting shush. “All the arrangements need to be made! I’m abandoning Joey to do it himself— but I got to the airport and I just… I looked at the list of flights and the big, block letters of New York…” Eddie shakes his head. His eyes look haunted. “I just couldn’t do it. I got on the first plane to LA instead.” 

“Must’ve struck some sort of memory, huh?” Richie says, quietly, with some semblance of a laugh. Eddie shakes his head so fervently the tears fly and dab at Richie’s hand, where it’s pressed into Eddie’s arm. 

“I remembered your invitation, you know, when, uh, when we talked on the phone, the last time?” He looks to Richie for recognition, and when Richie nods, some of the tension seems to bleed from his body. 

“Of course, Spaghetti Man, you’re welcome here anytime.” He pats his hand. Eddie laughs, wiping at his nose with the sleeve of his arm. 

“I guess I can never escape the likes of Spaghetti, huh?” 

Richie scoffs. He’s trying to play it off, like Eddie didn’t just admit he’s staying, like Eddie didn’t fall peril to a moment of grief and found Richie to be the only one who might give him what he needs in the face of it. Not _Joey_ . Richie shakes that off. No need to be bitter. Just be _better_. He finally sips at his tea and feels it edge off the harder bits of his drunken constitution. 

“Not while you’re under my roof, young man.” He rubs one last time at Eddie’s hand, finding it difficult to drink and soothe at the same time, but luckily Eddie goes for his cup, too. There are still tears drying on his face, but he smiles. 

“Oh, hell. I guess I have no idea what I’m doing here, in the end.” He rolls his eyes at himself and crosses his legs under the table. They bump precariously into Richie’s. Richie lets them rest together. 

“Come to enjoy my wonderful company, of course.” 

“And abandon all my responsibilities.” 

“Well, Spaghetti,” Richie grins, suddenly awash with joy in having a New Yorker discover the apathetic, shiny joys of his adopted hometown, “I think you’re in the right place.”

* * *

When Richie wakes the next morning, it’s to the loud trill of his phone. He rockets out of bed, shoving his thick-framed emergency glasses onto his face so he doesn’t go pummeling down the stairs, only to collide with Eddie right outside the door. 

They slam together in a tangle of limbs and muscle until Richie feels a pang in his knee he thinks is Eddie’s foot and he wonders if tumbling down the stairs might have been an easier way to go. 

Eddie, for his part, as soon as Richie presses back and away, looks both contrite and put-out. 

And—

“What is that, a heavy knit poncho?”

Eddie stares down at himself, mouth dropped open. “Wha—”

“It’s so _thick_.” Richie pinches the material between his fingers, shaking it like the weight will fall straight off Eddie’s back. “It’s blazin’ hot in these here parts.”

“You’re barely awake, how do you know how warm it is?” Eddie paws him off, brushing at the indent Richie’s thumb has made in the fabric. 

“I know it’s too warm for _that_!” Richie finally drags his eyes up and down Eddie’s whole form, now that his eyes have adjusted to the light. He’s in a heavy, striped sweater, a pinstripe blue and white, what a sailor might wear if said sailor were convinced they’d never meet water yet still meet the frigid breeze of the North Atlantic. “Did you think your wardrobe would somehow translate on this coast?” 

“It’s almost _Christmas_ ,” Eddie says, like that’s an excuse, and perhaps on the East Coast, it is. “And it’s a jumper, you maroon.” 

“You must be taking after good Billiam then, good chap—”

“Are you Western or are you British?” Eddie asks, flat, a smirk burning on his tight, thin lips. Richie’s stopped dead in his tracks. Not just by the attractive flair of blue and white Eddie’s sporting, or the effortless curl of his hair (how many products are cluttering up Richie’s guest bathroom?), or the ease with which he’s living in Richie’s house, walking through his hallway, standing hip cocked and eye squinted outside Richie’s _bedroom_ , but that Eddie gives as good as he gets. He doesn’t let Richie get away with putting on a mask; he peels it back, looks in his eyes, and asks him what the hell is going on underneath. 

“I’m a man of the world, darling,” Richie says, then backtracks when Eddie’s face goes a shade of white. “Did I hear the phone ring?”

Richie hopes it’s not his agent. Please, please, pretty please with whipped cream on top. He gave the guy the slip last night, which he’s been doing rather too much of in these last months. Assured he’s still got a career— with a few toothpaste commercials and a television pilot set to start filming in a few weeks— he’s not really made it his top priority to get cursed out by his betrayed, puppy-eyed looking representation. 

“Yes, uh.” Eddie shoves his hands in his pockets. “Your sister called.” 

Well, shucks. Somehow that’s _worse_. 

“Ah,” Richie clicks. His hand tries to find the pull of his own hair and he almost knocks his glasses clean off. “I assume you two caught up? Reminisced? Griped about the irresponsible Richie of present day?” 

Eddie sneaks a laugh while Richie hopes for the best. He assumes it was Annie— she’s the only one who calls on a regular basis, and he had promised he’d update her when he returned from Chicago. It’s been a _day_. That woman really has no sense of patience. 

“We chatted a little, yes,” he says, avoiding the question with a knowing glint in his eye. His hand comes up to flail in between them then, and Richie watches it raptly. “You didn’t tell me she married Ray George’s oldest!” 

“Right— _Brazen_.” Richie shudders. “Terrible name for a kid, but he’s grown into a rather stately adult.” Stately is the most polite way of putting it. He’s a bore. 

“My mother used to _live_ for Mr. George’s cinnamon buns on Sunday mornings.”

The memory dings like a loud, painful bell in Richie’s ears.

“The only sugar she ever let you have that wasn’t bottled and sold at Keene’s!” 

“She didn’t want me running circles around the house like a certain someone,” Eddie rolls his eyes, his elbow perilously close to jabbing Richie right in the heart. He feels the tug anyway. 

“Or _with_ a certain someone, more like,” Richie murmurs, loudly. 

Eddie was almost never allowed out on Sundays. Whether it was a misplaced religious principle or a Mrs. K Special Rule We Do Not Question, Richie never figured out, but a few times, in the dead of summer, Richie would sneak over to share in the sticky, syrupy goodness. His mother may have bought him a whole tray of buns, had he asked, but it never occurred to him to do anything but bogart the bigger half of what Eddie offered him, hunched in secret on his front porch, in ten minute spurts before his mother would peek at them through the window. 

The sauce would drip over his fingers where Eddie had passed it to him; Eddie’s unassuming pink tongue would poke out to lick the residue off the bend of his own wrist.

Eddie’s eyebrows go wiggly. A tiny little dance that Richie can’t parse out. His features are so unlike they were as a kid— more exaggerated, stretched out, less wrinkled and pinched, and maybe that’s a blessing. He was always so stopped up as a kid. Richie wanted to shake him out like a balled up shirt. Smooth and render out all the kinks until he could breathe. 

“So what did little old Annie want?”

Eddie squirms. Richie wants to poke at him.

“She, uh. Well. We got to talking.” His sharp, white teeth work at his lip. Richie rolls his hand in the universal _Annnnnnd?_ motion but that only makes Eddie stomp his feet against the tacky white carpet. “I couldn’t very well say no! We haven’t seen each other in years, and she started to ask about how we met up again and I guess I— I just _panicked_ because I can’t quite—”

“Wait, wait, hold up, young man, what are you _saying_?”

Eddie mumbles, his mouth curling over the words silently. Richie wonders if he’s gone temporarily deaf. 

“ _Huh_?” 

“We’re having dinner on Friday,” he says, kicking the volume up only a tad. The words smush together out of his mouth and through Richie’s brain, because what in the damn hell—

“ _Dinner_? She invited you to dinner?” He feels bereft. “How long were you two chatting?”

“Just a few minutes! It was probably the reason she called in the first place!” 

“Okay, alright,” Richie says, calming himself out of the eye of the storm to remember the reason Eddie is here in the first place. “Dinner.” 

“I’m sure I can call back and decline if you—”

“No, no,” Richie rushes to say, rubbing at his tired eyes under his glasses. He just needs some coffee. And some time to wake up. Maybe a shower, maybe a beer, maybe a— He just needs some time. “Dinner sounds positively lovely, I’m sure she’s already in a tizzy over the menu.” 

Eddie smiles, reluctantly. “She mentioned pork chops.” 

“Did she now?” Richie manages, the waves in his chest slowing. Eddie looks at least relatively pleased, which is a great sight above where he was yesterday. 

Perhaps an evening with some family might be helpful. Even if it’s Richie’s ridiculously mad family. His sister, full of too many words and not nearly enough self-restraint— but Eddie’s got some experience with those sorts. His brother-in-law who does nothing but talk about the model train setup in his basement while his wife rolls her eyes. His niece, his darling, shining beacon of light who laughs at all of his impressions, even if she’s about thirty years too young to understand most of them. 

And, of course, the family dog. 

It’ll keep Eddie busy. As for the time in between now and Friday, Richie’s got… nothing. 

Eddie stares up at him expectantly, the wide, loose rings of his sleeves falling farther down his arms where they’re crossed. There’s a light, blonde dusting of hair that catches Richie’s eye, scattered over the notch of his wrist bone, and trailing further up until the fabric conceals it. He wets his lips and considers a shower. 

“Make yourself busy in the kitchen, dear guest,” he tells Eddie, who glances toward the direction, furrowed brow back in action. “I’ll get all cleaned up and we’ll hit the town.” 

“The _town_?” Eddie screeches, all-but-bellows, and it reminds Richie of picking him up and swinging him over his shoulder; rolling in the grass under and over and around Eddie’s ragged voice, all the power of someone with a full set of lungs, who could take a full breath and really let Richie have it.

“Yes, _dahling_ , haven’t you ever dreamed of cruising down Rodeo Drive in style?” Richie moves to duck into the bedroom, but Eddie thwarts his escape with a hand clasped around his arm. 

His eyes are doing that sad, wobbly thing again, and Richie almost cranes his free arm around to rub at the crease— maybe that’ll smooth him out for good. But instead he lowers his head, watching Eddie with more patience than he’s shown in years. 

“I wanted to- to say thank you, you know,” Eddie starts, and Richie’s heart drops about three stories and smashes into the pavement of his stomach. “For letting me stay. I know you’re a busy man, and I appreciate you giving me the space I—” His throat works, bobs. Richie’s eyes stick, always captivated. “Thank you. Is all.” 

Richie swallows down the snarky comments that bubble up from the depths of his uncomfortable soul, like, for instance, pointing out the fact that Eddie parked himself on Richie’s stoop without asking, and Richie certainly isn’t the type of man to reject a beautiful blonde. 

So Richie laughs. Says, too loudly, “No problem, there, buck-o. I’m not opposed to showing you what a celebrity life is like for as long as I’ve got ya.” And he wants to ask how long that is; maybe propose it being _forever_ , but he knows that’s not what Eddie wants. Richie’s not one to keep pushing when he knows it’s not a sure thing. In fact, he usually runs clear the other direction. Rejection? Never heard of her. It never managed to catch up to him. Thank the clown or his charming good looks, either way it was the same result: prolonged and delayed heart-break. 

But Eddie just scoffs. “I used to chauffeur celebrities more famous than you, Richie Tozier.” 

“Ho-ho, he’s got _connections_ ,” Richie teases. Eddie blushes, but it clearly winds him up, too. 

“Yeah, so you better be careful tooling me around town in that convertible of yours. You never know who might show up on your step next.” 

“Oooh, mama, a _threat,_ ” Richie gripes, clutching at his heart, clenching his eyes closed following the blow. “You’re gonna fit in well with the family.” 

* * *

Most of the time between Eddie’s arrival and Friday night is spent together. 

Whether they’re cruising down Rodeo Drive— which Eddie _hates_ , thinks it’s far too decadent and expensive and he says all this with a watch that looks like it could finance a small village, which Richie tells him not-so-nicely and he blushes oh-so-nicely in return— or puttering around the house while Eddie makes comments about the decor (or lack thereof); or settling up to the beach so Eddie can see the water, close his eyes and feel the sea breeze on his face; or figuring out together how to cook in sync without wanting to murder each other over sole ownership of the spatula, Richie loves every single moment.

He lives day after day in an overarching fog of happiness he never really thought was possible, and he’s always been an outwardly cheerful guy— if you don’t ask any of his ex-wives, who had a glimpse at the interior. But this is something new and, he tells himself, unattainably temporary. Something fleeting and golden. Eddie has yet to book a flight back, or a train, or a long-form cab— they haven’t discussed how he plans to return, and Richie doesn’t plan on _asking_. It’s the untouchable, forty foot pink elephant in the room, and he’ll happily dance around it for the rest of his life if this is what he gets in return. Domestic bliss with Eddie Kaspbrak is worth never facing everything that’s boiling underneath the surface. As long as he gets to wake up to Eddie bumbling in the kitchen, glasses fallen low on his nose, complaining about the french press not holding enough water, he’ll never speak another word about anything serious again in his life. After all, he’s had a lot of practice at that.

And Eddie looks contented, too. For the most part. Quieter, maybe, but better than Richie expected. 

Conversation isn’t hard to come by, but Richie sees the sad sheen come over Eddie’s face when he unthinkingly mentions his mother. It’s not like there’s much helping that, in Richie’s view. From what he knows of Eddie’s life, which, admittedly, isn’t a whole lot anymore, most of it had to do with his mother. Then again, he supposes that isn’t much different from when they were kids. Still, Eddie shares. 

He tells Richie about starting up his company (when he was only twenty-seven, no less, when Richie was still bumbling around on the back-end of the entertainment industry, Eddie had him beat by two years); he tells Richie about meeting Joey a few years later, but doesn’t explain any further than how well-suited they are within the business, though— despite what he heard at the wedding— Richie hopes that doesn’t translate to the personal; he tells Richie about agreeing to buy his mother a bigger house when he was finally ready to get out on his own, and then admiring the architecture and space during the multiple tours, and somehow, wham, bam, no-thank you ma’am, he was moving into one of the rooms off the North wing and ten years later there he still is. 

It’s starkly different yet eerily familiar. His stories are chock-full of unanswered questions. Finding reasons to stay, never investigating the doubt churning down deep. Richie’s trajectory was a bit more exciting and shiny, but bred the same lack of satisfaction. The same hindsight he’s experiencing now: is there anything underneath? 

Sometimes Richie catches Eddie staring into the distance, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth, his long fingers twisting nervously over whatever weird art piece he’s pulled off of Richie’s built-ins in the den. He likes to pluck things down and ask questions. Richie likes to make up a new story with each one. Partly because he doesn’t remember the real stories; partly because he just wants to make Eddie laugh. Grief is an indeterminable process— Richie just wants to drag any ounce of happiness out of Eddie while he’s got him.

So when Friday finally arrives, Richie tries to undercut Eddie’s obvious nerves by never giving him a moment to breathe alone with his thoughts. 

It’s a leftover, fool-proof tactic from their youth, and Richie always found a certain give and take with it. Eddie would just get himself _stuck_. Whether it was his mother’s influence, whispering discouragements into his ear before he went out to play with the dirty band of miscreants he called friends, or maybe a swirling collection of a lifetime of anxieties— it set Eddie in a tizzy every so often over _one_ thing in particular. The color of the quarry water. The bugs running along the shore. The amount of studying he should be doing. How little juice his inhaler had left. 

No one wanted to be around Eddie when he was fixating; he was repetitive and relentless, looping over his irritation and paranoia like a circling hawk, though his resulting version of swooping in for the kill was a rattling asthma attack. Richie learned early on that the trick was making Eddie think of _anything else_. Even if that _anything else_ was getting Richie to _shove it_. Even if it meant Eddie being ridiculously, perilously angry with him— Richie was willing to sacrifice it for the greater good. And at least he was getting Eddie’s attention. In the end, that’s all he ever really wanted. 

Today, there’s no such obsession with one thing in particular. Just the whole kit-and-kaboodle. 

Eddie’s vibrating a frequency Richie can’t quite hear, pouncing around the kitchen with his concerns pouring out of his mouth like water out of the faucet Richie’s running while he does the dishes to busy himself. There’s a casserole in the oven Eddie insisted on making (“We have to _bring_ something, Richie!) with fourteen minutes left on the egg timer, and Richie’s halfway to a headache when Eddie abruptly stops behind him.

“Is that what you’re wearing tonight?”

Richie peers down at his lavender shirt, tucked demurely into white pants, suspenders striping up the length of his chest, and immediately feels defensive at Eddie’s tone. Sure, he’s got a wet spot forming where his tummy is poked against the counter, but sue a guy for cleaning up after himself! After four days living together (lord almighty, he’s gotta stop putting it that way in his head, especially in front of his family), he’s intuited rather well that Eddie hates doing the dishes. 

“What are you implying there, cupcake?” 

“It’s— oh. Nothing! I just… I wondered. If—”

“Alright, alright, let’s cut to the chase.” He drags two wet hands down the front of his shirt, fingers spreading a dark stain in long shapes. He flashes his cheesiest grin. “Better?” 

Eddie sputters, then points, then sputters some more, his face rising and falling in a cross between horror and pure confusion. Richie just spreads his arms, flicking his fingers, just asking for it. Yelling or laughing, he’ll take it. As long as it cuts some of the tension. 

Eddie goes for the chucks, as he always does. Soon, they’re both doubled over, Eddie waving a dish rag in Richie’s face, Richie bending him forward until he can get at Eddie’s hair for a ruffle. Eddie pats over where Richie’s made a mess. 

“The getup you insisted I buy—”

Richie tuts. “The _Versace_.”

“Right,” Eddie sighs, as if he doesn’t live in New York City. As if he didn’t have enough credit to buy it and then some. Richie’s starting to wonder if their wealth status is about relative. “It’s too... much. What if your family thinks I’m some hoity toity mirror warmer from the city?” 

Richie gives it pause. “And that would be… an incorrect assumption.” 

Eddie dishrags him again. 

“Alright, alright, what’s getting your goat, sleeping beauty?” Richie gives up the dishes for good. The pan from the baked gouda needs to soak, anyhow. “Shouldn’t I be the one quaking in my boots? They’re _my_ relatives.” 

“Why would _you_ be worried? You know them!” 

“To a certain degree,” Richie hedges, but Eddie won’t be so easily deterred.

“I have to make a good impression. It’s… important.” 

Richie bites his tongue. He’s gonna bleed out at this rate. Words of vague meaning keep pouring from Eddie’s mouth to which Richie has no idea how to answer. 

_This car would never do with my hair._

_I’d want to live closer to the water so we could spend more time on the beach._

_Another sink would really do in here, old man._

_I could get used to this life_. 

This one, just like the others, he lets slide. Maybe one of these days he’ll poke and prod, like he does with everything else. Fishing out Eddie’s intentions seems to be his achille’s heel. 

“They’ll adore you,” Richie says sincerely. “Besides, you’ve met my sister.”

Eddie clicks his teeth; it’s the most irritated Richie’s seen him since— well. The big hullabaloo they don’t discuss. _Haven’t_ discussed. He’ll add that to the pile of topics, along with Eddie’s mother, when (if) Eddie is leaving, and, oh, Richie’s sneaking suspicion that them spending all their time together is slowly but surely mending his soul back into one solid yet lovesick piece.

“Yeah, and she switched out my M&M’s for Atomic Fireballs!” Eddie yelps, his face almost as red as that day. Richie hiccups a halting laugh, and makes a note to mention that one to Annie tomorrow. That’ll really neutralize the threat from the start.

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest with an exaggerated pout. Richie wants to pinch his cheeks, or maybe smooch it right off his face. 

_I could get used to this life_. 

“Serves me right for trying to guzzle the whole thing in one go, I s’pose,” Eddie corrects. Richie cackles a little truer this time, but he’s always been a sucker for Eddie’s brand of humor. 

“Not sure the blame’s on you— you did only get one bag a month.” Another Mrs. K addendum. “And she’s the devil incarnate. Even at seven: sometimes her eyes would glow at night. Honest, I swear it, I’d pop into her room to say goodnight and she’d shed the whole street in _red_.” 

He curls his fingers in front of his eyes, clawing his way across the kitchen to beam into Eddie. Eddie laughs, and laughs, shrinking away yet somehow staying in one place, wrapping his arms around Richie’s middle and giggling his half-assed escape into Richie’s chest. The damp stains press between. Eddie’s head comes down to pillow against his heart, and he must feel the jump in Richie’s pulse. Richie wants to pull him closer, if it’s possible. Their limbs and eyes and gulping laughs fall together so easily, fit together seamlessly. He wants to roll around in it like the grass and come away light-headed with green knees. 

“You’re a liar,” Eddie whispers into him. 

His weight is heavy and jerking and comforting and far too much. Richie goes cold and hot. His armpits prickle. His tongue is numb. He feels like he’s flying, his heart is soaring but pounding out of his chest. His hands come up to sweep Eddie’s back, up his spine, up and up and _up_ until it cups around his neck, and it’s just like—

The cracking buzz of the timer goes off behind them, and when Richie pulls back, Eddie’s eyes are frenzied. They flick down to Richie’s lips, just for a moment, so quick that Richie’s sure it’s a buzzing-induced vision— the delicious scent of mayonnaise and crackers aromatic from the oven dulling the rest of his senses. So Richie turns around, mitts himself up, and his shaking hands wrench open the oven to remove the fruits of their labors. 

It’s a little burned on top. 

Annie will hate it, but she’d never say anything in front of Eddie. 

Richie’s suddenly, ruthlessly excited. 

Eddie waves a hand over the slight burn, as if he can retroactively set the timer for the correct time. In the end, he shoves the foil they got at the store into Richie’s chest, tries for almost a minute to get Richie to look at him — during which time Richie busies himself with pretending he’s never opened a package of tin foil in his life, to do anything but answer whatever question Eddie is boring into him via psychic wave — and goes upstairs to get changed. 

* * *

Things were over with Paul before they began. Richie knew it as soon as Paul looked him in the eye, inches from his lips, and whispered a long-suffering, “This isn’t easy for you, huh?” 

And it never was. But not for the reason he thought. 

Words didn’t flow like they did before; they were effortless, superficial, floated from the top of his throat and out his mouth, nothing deeper. Speaking to Paul felt like stirring up something within, something he hadn’t touched in years. Something he wasn’t sure truly existed. But being unable, or, as Richie always thought, unwilling, to access in full.

Soon enough, ushering themselves away for days at a time just didn’t suffice. Paul wanted more. Richie did, too, he just had no earthly idea how to go about it. “No one will care,” Paul said. 

Richie always thought it was appearances, what people would _think_ ; something niggling, itching, tearing at the back of his brain telling him it didn’t quite _fit_.

“I will,” Richie answered, every time but the last. 

* * *

  
  


When Eddie finally descends, Richie considers that he might not make it through the night. 

Clearly, his social pressure was far too strong, because Eddie looks striking in his new clothes. It’s a simple outfit, really; a salmon pink shirt with cuffed sleeves high up on Eddie’s triceps, a baby blue pair of pants with a lifted waist and flipped box pleats under a brown belt. He’s got matching shoes he brought with him — scrubbed of the infiltrating sand from when Eddie dove at the beach like a kid before realizing he was wearing his _good_ pair. The pants are the same shade as Eddie’s suit at the wedding, and Richie suggested them on purpose: it’s a breathlessly captivating color, cut with Eddie’s blonde hair, his nervous smile, the pale shimmer of his skin. 

And of course Richie can’t hold back. 

“Awoooga!” Richie crows as Eddie ascends the stairs into the kitchen. Richie would have preferred it the other way around — Eddie climbing down like a date on prom night — but the embarrassed and pleased flush on Eddie’s face makes up for it. 

“It’s too _casual_ ,” he says. He’s shining under Richie’s praise, and raking, inspecting eyes. 

“Exactly! You’ll fit right in!” Richie waves a hand over the whole length of himself, where he swapped out his purple for a darker blue (yes, he knew they would match; no, he will not admit that to his sister when she inevitably asks) and the suspenders for a belt, so Annie can’t grab hold and snap him at a moment’s notice. She’s been known to use them as an abusive form of incentive, and Richie’s nerves are already fried with Eddie’s presence. 

Eddie just smiles. Just does that little wave Richie thinks means _the compliments embarrass but intrigue me, so I’m making a cursory attempt at stopping you while really needing you to continue_. 

Just Richie’s biased interpretation. 

“I won’t comment on your outfit other than to assume you’re ready to go,” Eddie says once he’s eye level. Richie looks down in another bout of fake shock, then wiggles his eyebrows over his forehead. An appealing blush sneaks across Eddie’s cheeks in response and he heads for the door.

Here goes. 

Turns out, Eddie’s a natural. 

Richie should have known, really; it’s not like Eddie’s been living as a hermit. He drives people around all day every day. Perhaps not as much as he used to, but it seems his social skills haven’t taken a hit since he’s spent more time in the management office cooking the books than dealing directly with Pacino from behind the wheel. 

Eddie greets everyone warmly as they bombard him at the door, pulling him into awkward (Brazen) or all-consuming (Annie) or tiny and sticky (Isabelle) hugs and trifled small talk about his time spent in LA, his flight, and of course, the infamous cinnamon buns. Annie flashes Richie a cheesy grin as Eddie crouches down to Isabelle’s level to hear about her gaggle of school friends. Richie whistles ABBA and she stalks into the kitchen to get away. 

Eddie even hesitantly pats Roger the dog’s little fluffy head, and Richie finds it so spectacularly cute he actually has to cough over the involuntary whine that tries to sneak out of his mouth. 

“I’ve always preferred cats,” Eddie whispers to him once they’re past the foyer, and Richie’s fingers crinkle into the foil-wrapped corners of the dish Eddie made him carry inside. “But they’re all sweet, really.” 

“I get ya— now that Isabelle forms regular sentences I like her a sight better myself,” Richie barbs back, and Eddie spins to smile wide and shaky at him. 

It’s not _untrue_ , technically speaking. Richie’s grateful every single year for an increased level of ability in Isabelle’s social skills. When she was an infant, before Richie was very involved— his lost years, as he calls them, when he did a little too much cocaine and not enough interaction— Richie didn’t know what to do with her. She was a lump, with only chubby, flailing limbs to express herself. Now he can sit next to her at the kitchen table and make faces, or play lightsabers with her straw and his butter knife, or roll his eyes at the boring conversation _the adults_ are having about the ins and outs of Eddie’s job.

That is, until things take a turn for the more interesting. 

"Have you ever been down the aisle like this one, Eddie?" Annie asks, her grin from before back in full force, and Richie scowls through the walrus-straws shoved into his gums. Isabelle cackles, unaware of any change. She's a bit too old for this game, but Richie can't resist hamming it up. 

"Oh, no," Eddie says. He drops his fork from the mess of peas on his plate and wipes at his mouth with his napkin, even though it's plenty clean. Richie really could take him anywhere. "It was just me and my mother for all these years."

"And I'm sorry to hear about her, Eddie," Brazen busts in to say, only about the tenth word he's said tonight that didn't have something to do with finance or trains. At least Eddie knew what he was doing with the latter half. Richie winces at her mention; Eddie gives a kind smile.

"Thank you, it was, uh. Rather sudden," he says, clearing his throat. Richie suddenly regrets not bringing it up sooner, but frankly, Sonia Kaspbrak is rather low down on his list of priorities. Probably makes him something akin to a bad guy, but what else is new. Richie estimates Eddie showed up here for distraction, not for emotional clarity.

"Right after the reunion, I gather," Annie says. Eddie looks to Richie, who nods enthusiastically. Eddie's eyes go a bit fuzzy, but he nods along, the good fellow. Eddie was always the fastest at catching onto Richie's bits in school. Stan was the slowest, the drip. The first to squeal, even if Eddie was the fastest to turn back to Richie and rip him a new one. At least he kept his mouth shut until the victim was out of sight.

"Yes." Eddie's chair creaks as he shifts.

"So sad. You must've gotten all the arrangements together rather quickly," Brazen says, and Richie wants to jump across the table and shake him by the shoulders. The neon lights buzz in Richie’s brain: Eddie’s business! Eddie’s business! 

"Y-yes, I, well. It’s been difficult to plan from across the country, but I’ve been managing," Eddie says, sheepishly. Richie's head almost snaps off his neck and he swings to look. The straws don't survive the journey. Annie makes a small "oof" as one hits her in the nose, but Richie's focus is a one-man show right now.

"Was I involved in some funeral arrangements I'm not aware of?" Richie asks, and Eddie sits up straighter in his chair, but hunches over the table. "Because my billing rate climbs the _charts_ with family events. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, now funerals? I'm not sure how well my Reagan humor would go over with the likes of Mrs. K's friends."

"Richie," Annie scolds, but Richie's eyes don't move.

"Talk about rolling over in your grave," Eddie says. If Richie's stomach wasn't in his feet, he might even attempt a smile.

"Indeed!" Brazen says. What is _with_ this guy? Richie ignores him and rears back up for more.

"But, pray tell, how have you been getting anything done while you're thousands of miles away?" Richie knows it's not a sticking point, but he's plum _stuck_ , and nothing but the twisting tornado of his own concerns is at the forefront of his mind. Eddie licks at his lips, his eyes darting at their beloved hosts.

"My, um— my partner and I have been talking in the mornings, he’s been taking care of a lot of things while I’ve been gone,” Eddie says, directed at Annie and Brazen. Hell, Richie might think he’s talking to Isabelle over him. The lack of direct eye contact makes Richie want to stand up in a bout of fury and demand answers. He has no idea why his chest is burning, why his lungs feel like they’re expanding painfully, like he’s about to explode and won’t have a damn explanation to satisfy why he’s suddenly splattered all over his sister’s kitchen. 

Richie swallows. “Your—”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Annie says, rushed, over where Richie can hear _Joey_ ringing soundly in his head. Then, “I’m glad you have someone watching out for you.” 

“Yes,” Eddie agrees, eyes pinching together under his glasses, turning back to where Richie is still staring inquisitively at him. He pauses for a beat, and Richie softens. “Yes, me too.” 

Richie opens his mouth, but Eddie’s eyes fall back to the tablecloth. 

Isabelle sighs dramatically, because she’s seven, and cannot bear to have the conversation focus on someone other than herself for longer than ten minutes. Richie knows the feeling, and that’s why straw walrus became a tradition. 

So of course the conversation does move on, and Isabelle gets to pitter patter on about today’s lesson at school, and the solar system, and how some boy in her class ate too many Nutter Butters and puked all over her friend Dana’s desk. It’s all terribly interesting, the standard fare Richie is used to soaking up from her tiny little lightning-fast mouth (she must take after him), but tonight all Richie can see is Eddie listening intently, and the glances Eddie steals when Annie starts talking about her job, and the tight-lipped clenches Eddie makes as Brazen starts yammering about… well about himself. Richie watches and smiles and wonders if there’s anything he’d rather do than watch over this man for as long as Eddie will let it happen. 

* * *

  
  


They stay way too late. 

Two glasses worth of wine slosh around happily in Richie’s stomach, and they bid goodnight to Isabelle following dinner, so his mouth is running free with a lack of censorship. He’s got an arm slung warmly around Eddie’s shoulders, and every once in awhile Eddie turns to snort into his face at a joke, or anecdote (even Brazen gets in one or two, over their four hours together), or a memory Annie pulls out of the bank she must have labeled Richie’s Most Humiliating Moments. 

Richie’s not willing to admit out loud that he’s having a blast and a half, but the delighted look on Eddie’s face, the crackle of his laugh, is worth hanging with the adults for a mite longer than he’d like. In fact, by the time the ancient cuckoo clock on Annie’s scarlet red living room wall chirps its little heart out for the striking of 10 o’clock, Richie realizes he hasn’t glanced grumpily in that direction for at least an hour. 

“Well, boys, I think we’re going to have to make this a regular thing,” Brazen says, and Eddie blinks so many times in rapid succession Richie’s worried he’s about to slip back into a coma. There’s not a smidge of sweat dabbing into his new clothes, still radiant in pink, and Richie wants to cross their arms together and skip out into the night with its star-blemished sky and laugh about how hard his sister’s husband tried to impress them both and yet still came up short every single time. 

“Yes, _boys_.” Annie grimaces, elbowing Brazen in the gut, much to his chagrin. “But I’m sure Eddie is eager to get back to New York.” 

Richie watches as Eddie’s carefree smile quickly melts off his face.

There goes _that_ fantasy. 

After the Mother conversation, Richie was worried it would bleed into their time alone; now that the box of that topic had been opened, who knows if Richie will pretend it’s closed again. It’s not as if there are topics Richie is opposed to taking another look at, no matter how little he truly wants to know the answer to all of his questions. But with some time and some wine and some chocolate souffle, Eddie was back to his relaxed-California-party ways. Maybe it was the clothes, or the week spent in the heat, or maybe chocolate really does conjure an amorous mood, but Eddie flowed freely through food and laughter and heavy touch. He rested his head on Richie’s shoulder and patted at his hand where it lay on the table and dug a finger into his thigh under their chairs when he was being naughty. 

So Richie thought, hey, maybe we’ll just forget it. Maybe we’ll just soak in the moment now, like we’ve been doing for the past week. 

But his meddling sister won’t have that, no. 

“Well maybe just next week!” Brazen laughs, handing Richie the Tupperware of leftover souffle Annie insisted on slapping together. 

“Oh,” Eddie stumbles, hands shoved in his pockets, his long, golden arms an attractive contrast to the pink. “I’m— we’ll, uh.” Richie makes a slashing motion across his throat, and Eddie bites back a laugh. “Thank you so much for the invitation.” 

“Yes, and the mediocre company! Send Izzy our love.” Richie winces at the _our_ that poured out, but he nevertheless plants two hands on Eddie’s back. “Now will you let the guy out of your house, Braze?” 

“Of course, _boys_ ,” Annie says, winding in behind them as they finally make it out of the door. Richie sees her blunt eyes boring into him, his hands are firmly cupping at the wings of Eddie’s shoulder blades, so he sticks his tongue out in her direction. 

She copies him, sticking her thumbs in her ears and wiggling her fingers. Richie sees the twisted confusion on Brazen’s face as she swings the door closed and laughs into the curls on the back of Eddie’s head. 

“That was much more pleasant than you made it out to be,” Eddie tells him as they climb into the car, and Richie stops to stare at the roof of his convertible.

“Damn that last glass of wine or I’d have us feeling the wind in our hair the whole way home.”

Eddie groans. “I can’t decide if that would be lovely or completely disastrous.” 

“Ah, my favorite spot: the gray area,” Richie snorts, nixing it to swing back into the car alongside Eddie. “But unless you’ve got a whole can of something in that gorgeous mop, it’d probably tend toward the latter.” He reaches out to tousle the hair in question, and it gives easily. Eddie does, too, swaying with the touch. 

“Thank you for the wonderful night,” he says, as if Richie stuck a pork chop in the oven and then overbaked a souffle. 

“No reason to thank me! I was a bit of a Scrooge without the Christmas.” 

Eddie’s shaking his head halfway through the sentence. “You were a perfect gentleman.” 

“Pardon me?” Lightning must have just struck from the heavens. 

“Oh, cut the act, I don’t know who it’s for,” Eddie grumbles at him, and for once, Richie doesn’t have to feign ignorance— he’s already there. “You know very well that you’re charming when you want to be.”

“Spaghetti Man, I don’t think anyone has called me charming in all my—”

“Well I am,” Eddie says, fast and hard, his tone gone serious. Richie’s still sputtering in the face of such a compliment when Eddie reaches out and slips their hands together over the gear shift. 

Richie’s first instinct is to pull away; to laugh it off and let it slide, but it’s been so easy to pretend. It’s been this way all night long. Since Eddie climbed those stairs and blushed and Richie’s heart fluttered. Actually, it was probably earlier— when Eddie showed up on his step in LA, or when he saw him at The Happy Hanscoms wedding, or maybe when Richie went back to Derry for— For what? 

He shakes it off. He found Eddie there, in any case, and they started this race. Falling back into it easily, but each time they get to the finish line, they find the checkered flags are nowhere in sight and the whole crowd has dissipated and neither of them knows how to ask the other what in the hell happened. Richie feels a bit disarmed in the face of Eddie potentially giving him everything he’s ever wanted. 

Yet again, he’s faced with the fact that he wouldn’t know what to do with it once he has it. That he’s not sure he really deserves it. 

“I’m sorry I dropped into your life like this,” Eddie says, in the absence of Richie’s reaction. “I know I’ve said it before, but I really do appreciate you letting me stay, and spending your days with me, and—”

“It’s not much of a chore,” Richie says, quietly. The crickets chirp on Annie’s lawn. Eddie presses his lips together. 

“Of course.” Eddie smiles, and Richie feels it building. Feels it swirling and collecting, bursting from within, and he thought Eddie would be the one to break the dam. “I’ve been having a good time. Like tonight, I—”

“What are you doing here, Eddie?” Richie says, and he can’t help the desperation, the absolute whine in his voice, because he doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to know anything so badly. The drain of vulnerability coursing through his body is entirely unfamiliar. But Eddie brings that out in him; he can’t resist the soft, prodding touch of Eddie’s fingers sweeping over his wrist and promising him something he knows he can’t have. 

“I— I needed some space… some—” Eddie stops. Fixes him with a look that’s both parts sad and hurt. “I needed some space.” Richie feels his stomach churning and pushes it down. He needs to get through this. He needs to be _honest_ for once in his godforsaken life. 

“But what are you _doing_? Here. With me.” He gestures wildly. To the sky. To himself. To the interior of the car he bought three years ago when he found one grey hair and became one giant cliche of a middle-aged man. 

“Well you haven’t exactly started the car, but I was hoping we could make it home before—”

“Spaghetti, please.”

“Don’t… Richie.” Eddie screws up his mouth. “Please don’t call me that.” 

Richie’s feet start bouncing of their own volition. The hand pinned under Eddie’s breaks a sweat, but Eddie doesn’t move. The silence is deafening in Richie’s small, luxury automobile, outside his sister’s two-story suburban home, and Richie feels like he’s within reach of all the answers of life, if he can just put them all together in the right order. Eddie’s like the last missing piece. Like he looked down at one half of the puzzle and suddenly, at forty years old, went, “Aha! I knew something was missing!” and it was the whole corner section of the design. Richie’s just been operating on three fourths of a constellation, not even considering connecting the rest of the stars just waiting to be seen.

But Eddie shifts in his seat, his hand pulling back and off of Richie’s. Richie watches him stretch his fingers and blinks.

“We better be headed back,” Eddie says, but the moment is already long gone. 

Richie nods and starts the car. 

* * *

“You were a lark, darling,” Richie mumbled, the sight of her in the door a blurry silhouette against the dark of the night. Could he even remember what she looked like without the gossip rags to remind him? 

Did he ever want her? 

Did he ever want anyone else?

* * *

Richie barely hears a squeak from Eddie for the next twenty-four hours.

They arrive back at Richie's house late, almost midnight, so it’s no surprise that Eddie heads straight to his bedroom. 

Richie drinks two full glasses of water and stares at the toilet off the kitchen just to convince himself he doesn’t have to puke. He didn’t have that much wine; the circumstances are more to blame than any over-imbibing on his part. 

But the next morning, in the harsh light of day, Richie wakes around his usual time to find no coffee brewed in the kitchen. In fact, the whole house looks almost untouched. He ducks in covertly to the guest room, _Eddie’s_ room, and finds all of his belongings gone, presumably packed into his large suitcases. There’s no evidence of his cardigan, or his electric toothbrush, or his extra pair of glasses that he leaves on his reading desk during the day. In a week, Richie’s gotten to know so many little details about Eddie’s daily routine that it makes his chest ache to miss it. 

Richie brews his own coffee. 

He drinks it on the back deck, alone, staring out at the empty pool, and going over their entire conversation from the night before. 

Unluckily, his memory doesn’t serve him very well, and he has a meeting with some execs at two in the afternoon, so he showers and dresses and tries very hard to pretend that he’s not hungover or heartsick. He must pull it off, because everyone seems jolly happy with him. Even Steve is pleased, patting him a little too hard on the back with a “Finally, the old Rich is back,” and Richie just grumbles, because _fuck_ he hopes that isn’t true. 

He’s not sure who he is anymore without an Eddie in his life. Without—

And it’s only been a week. 

When he gets home, the house is still empty. 

He picks up the phone to call someone, but can’t think of who, and hangs it up after the dial tone breaks through to an unwelcoming set of tones that means even the phone has lost its patience with him. 

He takes a swim, but just floats along the surface while he sips at some whiskey. He tidies up his own bathroom. He rearranges every single shelf and built-in, and gets caught reading his copy of Albert Camus’ _The Stranger_ in French, criss-crossed on the floor of his den. He looks up the recipe for a chocolate souffle in one of the cookbooks Terry bought him and he kept out of some weird misplaced honor to her memory. She loved to bake; she tried to teach Richie a few too many times, but he always finds himself useless in the kitchen when he can’t liberally season to his heart’s content. Baking takes too much precision. Richie needs to be able to improvise. 

Of course the souffle deflates. It gives him one, glorious shining moment of victory— a moment in which he thinks that everything might turn out alright. That Eddie might walk in that door any second, wolf down his concoction of baking brilliance, and take Richie into his arms and bed as a thank you. That Eddie might stick around for ever and ever. 

But there’s the business partner. And the fact that it’s almost seven in the evening and Eddie still hasn’t shown up. 

And, _of course_ , the resounding wheeze of the souffle sinking back into its specialized pan— crushing Richie’s fantasies along with his sister, his willpower, and the slow ticking of the clock above his head. Just as he’s removing the oven mitts and chucking them directly at his creation, he hears a fumbling at the door. 

“Eddie?” Richie calls, skidding around the corner in his apron to get a glimpse of the front door, and there he is. 

He’s cradling a bottle of wine, and a handkerchief Richie recognizes from his suitcase, pulled out on the second day when he contracted a sneezing attack after moving some of Richie’s books around on their shelves. His hair hangs limply on his head in strands, his forehead drawn down in a line, his eyes watery and rimmed red under his gold, barely-there glasses.

“Eddie—”

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Eddie mumbles.

Richie bounces on his feet. “Had a little to drink?” 

Eddie glares his way, so he points to the bottle hanging in his hand. 

“Oh. No. I bought this at the winery in… um. In Anaheim.” 

Richie blinks. “You went— how did you get there??” 

Eddie turns to look at the stairs, probably contemplating leaving Richie alone with his questions. 

“I took a cab,” he says, instead. 

“Did you have a good day?” Richie asks hopefully. 

Eddie glares at him, his lips wobbling. “No,” he laughs darkly, wiping at his mouth. “No, it was terrible.” 

It smashes up a little part of Richie’s soul to hear him so sad, and after he’s spent the whole day moping around the place himself.

“Eddie, listen,” he says, at the same time Eddie says, heatedly, “You wanna know what I want?” 

And they stare. At each other, in a way they keep doing, in these moments. Richie feels them all, combined into this singular moment of frustration, and, yet again, he has no idea what to say. 

But Eddie seems like he’s got a plan. 

“I wanna know what _you_ want,” he says. Richie blanches.

“What… I—”

“Yes, _you_ ,” Eddie points, waving an unopened bottle of wine and a handkerchief like he’s bidding goodbye to Richie as he sails away on the Titanic; that’s how Richie feels this whole shebang is going anyway— he’s either going out dead or on a lifeboat to a completely new existence. 

One where he, apparently, cannot speak. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? 

Eddie shakes his head. “You keep _doing_ this.” 

“Doing what?” Richie finally presses out. His whole body feels frozen. Bulldozered in the face of an angry, thrashing Eddie Kaspbrak. 

“Stopping! It’s like the words are all jammed in your throat when you look at me, and then you—” He clenches a fist. “I’ve never known you to hold back on me. Not like this.” 

Richie opens his mouth. He can feel himself paling, thinks about the toilet again, but really doesn’t want to dash out just to puke his guts out and leave Eddie hanging. But he also, so desperately, doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. Not this time. Not with Eddie.

“Do you know Joey wanted to be with me?” Eddie asks. Richie swallows. 

“Ah,” he croaks. “The business partner.” The words come easier when they’re dripping in disdain.

“For your infor _mation_ , he asked me out, he asked me to dinner, and I said _yes_ ,” Eddie hisses, and Richie realizes he doesn’t need the liquid courage. Eddie’s always been brave. Richie wants to crumple onto the floor like the balls of paper they would stick in their mouths and make into loogies. 

“I didn’t—”

“We had a lovely time.”

 _Lovely. Thank you for the lovely night, Richie_. 

Eddie huffs. “He was a little less than a gentleman, believe it or not. He took me home to my _mother’s house_ —” Eddie’s whole body shivers in the wake of the words. “— and he tried to kiss me on her porch, and I let him.” 

“Eddie—” 

“Shhh, Richie. Just—” He puts a finger to his mouth. The neck of the wine bottle presses into the skin of his neck in turn. Richie wants to scream. “I stopped it. I stopped the— the whole thing. Right before I came here. Right before I went to… to Bev and Ben’s wedding. Right before I knew I was going to see _you_.” Eddie points at him this time. Richie stays still. Stays quiet. At least this time one of them is doing the talking. 

“I’ve never let anyone touch me like that.” Eddie falls onto the bench in the foyer, folding in on himself, and the wine bottle falls the same way, clinking against the wood. “I’ve never wanted anyone to, really. And I didn’t want him to, either, but I thought, ‘At least it’s something!’” 

Richie inhales sharply. He wants Eddie to have more than _something_. Why can’t he give Eddie something? It’s swirling, and building, pitting deep in his stomach and flaming up through his vocal chords. He knows he can’t keep it in much longer, not with Eddie’s face reddening, his tears falling, curled up on Richie’s bench like he isn’t the only thing Richie wants in the world.

“But I don’t _want_ something. I want _everything_. I want—”

“What!” Richie yells, echoing harshly in the white plagued house he calls home. “What do you _want_ Eddie?” 

“I want what you won’t give me! I want what you’re dancing around and refuse to tell me! I see it, Richie. You think I don’t see it?” Eddie screams back, and it shatters something that’s been lying disarmed inside Richie’s heart. 

He takes a step, then another, and another, until Eddie’s rising to meet him, and they’re face to face. Both of their breathing is kicked up, their chests heaving in an off-beat tandem that Richie can almost feel between them. 

“What can’t I give you?” Richie asks, whispering quiet but harsh.

Eddie licks his lips. His eyes flick down to where Richie does the same. “I—”

And Richie leans in to kiss him. 

Eddie responds in kind, violent and rushed, their teeth clacking as Richie’s hand comes around to cup at the back of Eddie’s head. He brings them closer, pushing their hips together, and then Eddie whines into his mouth and Richie loses whatever semblance of control he still maintained. He’s bucking mad, the heat palpable, and Eddie clearly feels the same. 

“He—” Eddie breaks, roughing fingers against Richie’s chest. “He kissed me like this, he—”

“Fuck him,” Richie growls, the pent up words stinging his tongue, and Eddie presses further into him.

“ _Richie_.” 

Richie’s sure he means it as a scold, but it comes out a desperate moan, and Richie licks at the row of his bottom teeth and Eddie drops the wine bottle for good. The anger with which they come together is startling, but Richie can’t find it in himself to calm things down. It edges on pain, the culmination of all of their missed moments and unsaid things zeroed down into the slick meeting of their mouths, Eddie’s tongue searching for his own, and then they’re each whimpering with it.

They grab and grapple and pinch and clatter at each other; their hands find arms and their thighs twist together and Richie tries so desperately not to bruise but Eddie doesn’t seem to give two shits. He’s giving it his all, and Richie swallows it up and asks for more. He didn’t think he was allowed. He didn’t think he’d have anything like this. 

He traces lines with his hands up Eddie’s back, over the broad curve of his shoulders, across the points of his collarbones while his mouth continues its work. Eddie’s hands grip tight and hold strong around Richie’s jaw. Richie wants to lean down and nip at them; take Eddie’s fingers in his mouth and tongue between the gaps. Suck each one down while Eddie watches. He wants to lay Eddie down on the floor, strip off his clothes, and press kisses to every inch of him. 

“Richie,” Eddie keeps murmuring, in the absence of anything else Richie will let him say. The heat climbs with every utterance, like Eddie is asking a question Richie can only answer by dragging him closer. 

The only sound in the foyer is gasping, the shuffle of clothes, and Eddie’s whimpered versions of his name. 

On any other day, in any other situation, Richie might want to take this slow. As always, however, his brain is moving at a hyperspeed pace, and once he feels the hard press of Eddie’s cock between them, he wants nothing more than to unbutton his pants and see it. The jagged memory of his history dances through his head: his mouth around a hot, heavy cock, pressing it inside of him, slipping his fingers around the stretch and gathering up the groans like prizes at the fair. It’s something he wants so badly from Eddie he can taste it. Just from one touch. 

If Eddie wants to know what Richie wants, Richie will let him know. 

“Ed,” he gruffs, moving them back until Eddie hits the wall and measures out a slow “oof.” 

“What, what,” Eddie gasps, not really a question, his eyes bleary in the face of Richie so close. 

“Lemme,” Richie says, tearing at Eddie’s shirt, and Eddie lets him lift it off without another word. Richie takes his off, too. The first press of their bare skin— their hairy chests— drags a groan from the both of them, and Richie feels that, too. Stuck and shuddering between them. He didn’t know that could feel so good. He didn’t know he could feel so electrified in every single molecule of his body. 

Eddie’s a sight, but that’s no surprise. Even under the layers, under the pink shirt or blue suit or suspenders, Richie knew he was stunning. Imagined weaving a tongue around the poke of his pink nipples, mouthing along his pecs and tasting the patched blonde hair that barely covers his chest. Richie dips his head now, desperate for skin under his lips, and finds Eddie’s neck most pleasing. Eddie gasps, and _fuck_ , Richie wants more of that. His teeth latch down just once. Eddie inhales, sharp, and Richie needs to be inside him. Wants to say _Give me everything you wouldn’t give him_. 

“These, _these_ ,” Richie says instead, pawing at Eddie’s belt, and Eddie goes along easily. 

“Yours, too,” Eddie whispers, taking a bite from what he can reach of Richie’s shoulder, gesturing at his own belt. “Richie, please.” 

And who is Richie to deny him that? To deny him anything anymore. Although, now all wrapped up in the shine of them together, he’s beginning to think it was more about denying himself than Eddie. Now that he has this, he’s not sure how he’s expected to go back. He’s spent his life learning how not to let someone get too close— there’s always been that line between where his mouth ends and his heart begins, but Eddie knows it all. And now that Eddie’s had this… Richie will never recover. 

Richie unbuckles his pants in a rush, pushing them down and stepping out of them as Eddie does the same. Maybe in another life, in another world, where this all hadn’t began with a fight, where there weren’t biting words and a day spent apart, where there weren’t bitter mothers and wannabe boyfriends and the gaggle of exes Richie has racked up, they would giggle their cares away, standing in Richie’s foyer in nothing but their undies. But instead Eddie’s face is serious, pulled, dark and hungry. Richie mirrors him. Runs a hand down Eddie’s cheek, like he’s wanted to for all these months. He traces a shaky, hungry line down the middle of Eddie’s chest, then, eyes flicking up to Eddie’s— not for permission, so much as recognition— cups around the bulge in Eddie’s undies. 

Eddie hisses, then arches up into him. The feel of him, hard and warm and aching in Richie’s palm is enough to sting tears at Richie’s eyes. He hasn’t cried since ‘71, but he comes pretty damn close, with Eddie staring at him like this. Then Eddie mouths into him, connecting them in another kiss, no sweeter than the last, and Richie feels the tears about to fall. He grabs hold of Eddie’s arms, one for each hand, breaking their kiss, and Eddie’s whole face twists with betrayal. Richie whirls him around, pressing him hard into the wall, and Eddie groans.

Richie drops to his knees. 

“Richie,” Eddie says again, a cross between surprise and what Richie hopes is lust. He just wants to… swallow Eddie whole. Slipping the underwear down around Eddie’s pert, perky thighs, dusted in golden hair like the rest of him, Richie revels in the round, delicious sight of his ass. 

“Wanna be— I gotta be—”

“Do it,” Eddie gasps into the white paneling he ran a disdainful hand over just earlier this week. Richie can see a string of drool already collecting at the edge of his lips, and he wants to stand up and lick it off, but continues on in his original endeavors. He needs this, if he’s going to finish this night out how he wants. And he _wants_. He’s not going to hold back anymore. 

He spreads Eddie open and Eddie knocks a fist against the wall. “Richie, _ohhh_ —”

“Eddie,” Richie says, nipping at each cheek with a foggy brain. He can barely see through the want, the pure physical _need_ to get as close to Eddie as he can. So he wets his lips, gathers all the spit he can in his mouth, and licks right at Eddie’s opening. 

Eddie jerks so violently that it almost knocks Richie right off course.

Richie dives further, swirling a tongue around the tight, clenching center of him. He reaches an arm around to wrap a hand around Eddie’s cock, wet at the tip. Pumping a few times, just to get him excited, just to let him know he’s there. Eddie bends further, pressing his hips back into Richie’s face. Richie’s hungry, and desperate— panting, slicking Eddie up to take him. He needs fingers, too, so Richie lets Eddie start touching himself to press one inside him. 

“More, Richie, Richie, more.” Eddie’s thrashes against the wall, madly stroking his cock through his palm like the very touch of Richie’s mouth, and fingers, and palms spreading him apart are shaking him to his core. Richie adds a second finger almost as quick as the first one starts to stretch, and Eddie groans appreciatively. 

It’s too fast: how Richie stands, wipes his mouth, unzips his own pants. He doesn’t have anything but his own spit. Doesn’t have a condom, doesn’t have the time or the wherewithal to even realize it. Eddie pushes back, hips a shaking mess, naked and glistening in the evening light. Richie wants to flip on all the switches just to see him. But Eddie’s writhing.

“He didn’t— Richie, no one’s ever—”

“I know, I know, I’ve got you,” Richie says, and starts to push inside. He’s red and leaking himself, the anticipation having built until he was a dripping mess inside his own underwear. The sounds, the feel, the _smell_ of Eddie under him could’ve gotten him there without a hand. Without the achingly tight glove of Eddie around him. Without Eddie’s arms scrabbling back to grab at him, to pull him closer, even while he whines through what must be pain. Richie laps at the sweat shining on the back of his neck. Thumbs into his hips and starts rocking in and out, pressing them both into the wood. 

“It’s… _Richie_.”

Eddie trembles under the sweep of Richie’s hands as they move together— though the rhythm is as crooked as Richie’s ever had it, it’s blissful pleasure all around, the heat, the pressure, the anger he’s still got dwelling inside him. He wants to drown in it, to never let it end, but Eddie’s already fluttering around him. It’s not going to take long. For either of them. He already senses the cracking, shivering pull of his abdomen, his balls, his dick where it’s fucking faster and harder into Eddie than he ever thought he’d be allowed. But all Eddie does is ask for more, move his hips, punch out little whines that make Richie’s gut light up. 

Then Richie hooks his chin over Eddie’s rippling shoulder and growls, “I know what you wanted. You wanted _me_ ,” and Eddie gives a choked shout. He starts to spasm, garbling non-words into the wall and Richie reaches around just in time to feel Eddie’s cock come in spurts over his fingers. 

He’s beautiful, ethereal, like a cream-colored fever dream as he strangles Richie’s cock, brings him to the edge and throws him straight off, and all Richie can do is bite down on the pale meat of Eddie’s shoulder and shake through it.

Richie gets lost in the heaving of their breath, in the expanse of Eddie’s bare, damp back as it shifts and moves back to life with each lungful of air. His arms shake as they wrap around Eddie’s torso, trying to keep him close while he can. It takes them full minutes to separate, and Richie can’t ignore the wince Eddie gives when he pulls out. He wants to carry him to bed, pamper him and press him with kisses, so he takes Eddie’s hand, wordlessly, and leads him, naked, to the master. 

Eddie’s quiet, trembling, restless with tears and sweat. Richie lays him down and cleans him up, cuddles into him and holds his breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He knows he must have crossed a line— but he wants to live in this moment a little longer. Through the anger and the jealousy and the passion, he just wants to have Eddie like this. Wants to pretend it’s all perfect, that they left Derry together, arm in arm, able to push away everything else building a wall between them. 

Eventually, Eddie’s breathing evens out. Richie strokes a hand up and down the center of his chest, feeling the steady beat of Eddie’s heart in the center. He presses in close to even the score.   
  


* * *

“I told you not to call me Spaghetti Man,” Eddie said, his eyes peering up straight, hung on the ceiling where the roots grew nothing but down, rotten and dripping, frightened like the rest of them. 

Richie’s heart pounded in his chest as Eddie’s eyes fell to his, watching, waiting, and Richie wanted to reach out then. Wanted to grab onto each other and _hold_ so nothing could get at them. 

So nothing could tear them apart.

Eddie looked away.

* * *

Richie snuffles awake the next morning to an alarming amount of light. Cascades. Waterfalls. Absolutely no avoiding it, not even with his thick comforter. He bellows in pain before the darkened silhouette of an Eddie makes its way into his spotty vision. And with that, he’s flooded with memories of the night before. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Eddie says, quietly, like Richie still might be lulled back to sleep. 

“No? What appears to be the surface of the sun begs to differ.” He squints into the onslaught and makes out the shape of a tie hanging from Eddie’s neck. “Going somewhere?” 

Eddie peers down at himself, pressing the tie to his chest. It’s a checkered maroon against a colorless shirt. He’s— he’s fully dressed. 

“I’m—” Eddie takes a breath. Pinches his lips together. His glasses slip an inch down his nose. “I have a flight back to New York in four hours.” 

Richie flings himself up until he realizes he’s fully nude, but he manages to side-swipe Eddie in the face with the comforter. 

“ _Four_ — four hours from now? Like today?” 

“Today, yes.”

That can’t be right. He mumbles, “I don’t get it,” before he realizes it, and Eddie flares.

“I’ve got to go to her funeral, Richie!”

“Funeral,” Richie repeats back, his brain not completely untangled from sleep. “You’ve got to— yeah. Yeah, right, yeah, of course you do.” He sees Eddie nodding fervently and follows suit. 

“I always planned on going back,” Eddie says, more softly this time. He might as well have shouted it directly into Richie’s face with how it stings. Richie presses a fist against the base of his throat at impact. 

“Right,” he chokes out. Eddie just smiles, easy as pie. Richie tries not to choke on his own heart, trying to force its way out of his throat, wrapped in knives. 

Eddie sits on the bed by his feet, and shines with a smile. “I had a—”

“Probably for the best,” Richie says. It’s bubbling up in him, the viscous, growling monster. “This was fun, a little _emotional_ , I’ll give it that, but it was a good time, right? Got in some shopping, some family visits and a big ol’ crappy souffle!” 

Eddie looks stricken. Rears back and off the bed, his arm bending in a claw like he’s in one of those old horror movies and Richie has suddenly started oozing green slime from his mouth. 

“Richie—”

_Richie. R-Richie. He— he never—_

Richie slams his eyes shut. 

“Oh, and don’t forget about the passionate _fucking_ —”

“Richie!”

“—you were treated to last night. But you know that’ll be here waiting the next time you want it, right?” 

Eddie cups his hands over his eyes, as if he can hide. The act of it has Richie’s heart in tatters. He wants to scream his anger from the rooftops. Run out back and bellow it, then fall into the pool and sink to the bottom. He wants to lurch up out of the bed and rip Eddie’s hands from his face. He feels like a snapping dog, his teeth clamped down deep into Eddie’s ankle and shaking until he gets a reaction.

_Don’t leave. Stay with me. Tell me you love me._

_Please don’t make me say it._

Eddie turns toward the window, collecting himself. He’s haloed in light from the window, but the whipping winds of indignation blow out any beauty Richie may have seen before.

Richie presses a hand over his eyes and waits for the closing of a door, when he feels the heavy weight of the bed shifting. 

“You know,” Eddie starts shakily, and Richie’s hand startles off his face to watch him. “Everyone used to say, ‘That Richie Tozier sure likes to hear himself talk.’” He huffs, a pained laugh, and Richie tries to snort but it gets caught in his throat. 

He’s heard that one, and every other iteration besides. Every single explanation for his motormouth, his endless rambling of jokes and the like. Eddie’s face screws up as Richie watches. 

“It always made me so _mad_. Spitting mad, like you used to get me, too. Just hearing them say those things about you when they were so clearly wrong. They didn’t know you. They didn’t watch you talk to your friends— make- make jokes with your friends. I did.” He smiles softly before it pinches into a pout. “I watched you watch _us_ , too. Watch for our reactions, watch us smile, watch us laugh. Sometimes it was like it didn’t matter what you said, and I certainly don’t think you were paying it any attention. You just wanted to cheer us up. And we needed that.” 

He licks at his lips. Stands again, brushing at his pants. Richie feels the absence of him like a missing limb. 

“But I always wondered what it was you _weren’t_ saying,” Eddie says. He chews at his lip, his eyes wide, and Richie realizes he’s not just talking about when they were kids. And in the face of what isn’t even a question, Richie can’t make himself give an answer. He’s not ready to face his monsters; he’s frozen in the overwhelming shadow of them. Stuck and waiting for someone else to pull him out. 

And he’s already said enough. 

Eddie blinks, but it’s too dark to see the tears. 

“I’ll call you from New York,” he says with a sniff, and walks out the door. 

* * *

  
  


Richie’s not alone for long. 

Oh, he mopes first. He sulks. He broods. The second day in, he even makes it all the way down to scale to honest-to-god _languishing_. He spends full hours in front of the television, rotating through the daytime schedule until it turns to late-night talk shows, and then he gets so depressed watching Carson toil through his opening monologue that he switches the channel until all he gets is static. Staring too long makes his eyes fuzzy, and he’s barely eaten anything, so he calls it a night when he starts to worry the buzz is forming into voices. 

Even the effort required to make tea, or turn on the stove, or get dressed is too much. Forty-eight hours is apparently the threshold into an arrested existence. And the worst thing about it all is that he knows he deserves it. He thinks of food, or coffee, or a nice outfit, and doesn’t even want to give himself the chance. He’s been here so many times before. But never like this — never so caught in the middle of all of his regrets. 

Luckily, Annie hasn’t been able to leave him alone in years, and with the promise of someone new she thinks she can bother, she’s already got a bogus excuse ready to go as soon as he picks up the phone. 

“You left your casserole dish here.”

“Is that so?” Richie peers into the kitchen to see the empty dish sitting on his countertop.

“Yes, and please tell Eddie I bought a half-dozen of those buns I was telling him about. The apple cinnamon doo-dads? They’re not as good as what he remembers, but I think if he puts his mind to— actually, you know what, can you just put him on the phone? I don’t know why I’m telling this to you. You’re going to mumble him some—”

“ _Bzzzt_!”

“Richard—”

“Neither _Richard_ nor Eddie are home right now, please leave a message after I hang up the phone,” he says, but presses the phone tighter to his ear. He’s spent the last two days in abject silence— just the sound of her breathing is a bit of a relief. Good god, how far he’s sunk. 

She gives it another beat of pause before he hears her tell-tale sigh.

“You coward. Can’t even hang up on me.” 

He huffs. “I’m losing my touch.” 

“You’ve lost _something_.” 

“Peace and quiet now that you’ve called, yes.” 

She hums. Says, “Eddie went back,” because she knows she doesn’t have to ask. 

“Indeed. Off to the Big Apple and greener pastures with his helpful right hand man, and I have a meeting with Big Wigs next week. We’re all moving on here.” Richie grits his teeth against the hope she’ll give it up. 

“You’re not going to the funeral with him?” 

Richie shrugs. “Didn’t see my invite.” 

“They don’t send invitations to _funerals_ , you priss,” she grumbles. Isabelle’s voice rings in the background, so she rustles around for a minute, appeasing the child. “You need to go.” 

Richie shakes his head. “I hate planes. I lost my keys. I’ve heard people are real rude in New York and I have a sensitive constitution.”

She blazes through his defenses. 

“You two were peas in a pod and now you’re just abandoning him during one of the hardest times in his life. He needs you.” 

“You know what they say about assum—”

“You better jump on the first plane you can find, Mister, and make it to New York before that poor boy has to grieve all alone,” she blurts, not giving him a second to breathe. He feels it tight in his chest, the expectation, the _truth_ , but he can’t hear it. 

“It’s… very complicated,” he bites out. 

“Oh, don’t give me that. You’ve made weirder things work in your life.” Weird? That’s one way to put it. Not a _nice_ way, but he knows his sister. It’s her back-handed approval, given to him with a slap across the face. 

“Listen—”

A knock rattles his door. 

For a split second, he believes Annie may have actually summoned Eddie by suggestion. It was only a matter of time before she made someone appear through sheer force of stubbornness. In any case, it’s an opportunity to push her off the phone and further avoid his problems. She’s still talking when he yells out:

“Gotta go, there’s someone at the door, nice talking, sis!” and slams the phone back onto the receiver. 

He secures his robe around his waist— he can just imagine the headline now: “Washed Up Comedian Flashing Guests Before They Introduce Themselves!”— and wrenches open the door to find Ben Hanscom on the other side. The deflation of his heart doesn’t show because his face tinges with surprise instead. He grunts, and Ben smiles. 

“You look like shit, Rich,” Ben says, first, and Richie remembers exactly what he’s always appreciated about Ben: he’s never given Richie an ounce of slack. It might be exactly what Richie needs right now, if he hadn’t just gotten an earful from his least-favorite sister.

“And what exactly are you doing in these parts?” Richie waves him inside, looking around for another weary traveler in his wake. “And where is the missus? Aren’t you due to be a father soon?” 

Ben laughs. The sound of it is hearty and wonderful in Richie’s empty house. He’s already been missing the way Eddie would laugh with his whole body, just like that, if Richie really got him going. Getting Ben to laugh might be a more impressive feat, in actuality. As kids, the most Ben would give him was a crooked, wry smile. Like the very insinuation Ben found him funny would give way to his icy exterior. He never blamed the kid— he had his own shit going on— but Richie still found him fascinating. 

“She didn’t show in person, but she’s the reason for the visit.” He’s clutching a jacket, and Richie frowns down at it. “I told her about our little chat at the wedding and she was concerned.” 

“Oy,” Richie groans. Scratch all that, he does _not_ need this right now. Soaking in his own thoughts and feelings for three days since Eddie left has left him bruised and emotionally battered. He doesn’t remember being this broken up about someone leaving him since… well. Never. And doesn’t that say something. So much for avoiding his problems.

“Yeah, oy, Rich, a big ol’ oy. You think I wanted to drag my ass through the blinding lights of Hollywood just to check up on you?” 

“Well then why did you?” Do these people have Richie’s-in-emotional-peril senses? “You could’ve just let me rot in my misery.” Richie closes the door and leads him to the couch. He wraps the robe more tightly around his body once he’s seated. Ben rolls his eyes. 

“So you _are_ miserable.” 

Richie glowers up at him. Is that something? Glowering? Well he’s embodying it anyhow. 

“What gave you that idea, Benjamin? I’m simply moping in a plaid robe and eating nothing but the tub of prunes Eddie left when—” 

_Ah, shit_. 

“Eddie was here?” Ben scooches closer on the couch. Richie scooches away. 

“ _No_.”

Ben sighs and rubs a hand over his now-stubbly chin. The hair must’ve come back in the interim, and Richie realizes he has no idea how long it’s been since they’ve seen each other last. Living with Eddie for a week was like throwing himself smack dab into the middle of a space-time continuum. Could’ve been a week, felt more like a year. At least that’ll keep him going for a while, at least. If only he didn’t have the damn memory of cursing Eddie out before he left. 

“It’s Eddie,” Ben says, matter-of-fact. 

“It’s _nothing_ , and it’s certainly not Eddie.” Richie shuffles in on himself, pulling his knees up as close to his chest as they go. It used to be so comforting as a kid, folding in half. Now it just reminds him how creaky his body is getting. “His mother passed— he just came for a few jokes and to avoid his problems. The Richie Tozier Special.” 

Ben laughs again. Richie hears nothing but pity. 

“I’m sure Eddie wouldn’t use you like that.” 

Richie’s chest sets ablaze. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, bud.” 

“Well I’m _sure_ you look like you’re about to melt away here like the Wicked Witch of the East, and I’m also sure my wife knows what she’s talking about. You don’t do well on your own now, do you?” 

Richie eyes him. “That what she said?” 

“Something like that.” 

“Ha!” Richie points, and Ben rears back in the face of it. “That gal of yours thinks she’s so smart.” 

“You’re telling me she’s wrong?” 

“I’m telling you she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.” 

“Right, right,” Ben says, tone heavy and irritated, and Richie knows he’s successfully riled him up. At least they’re on the same page. “You’re just sitting around here sulking ‘cause things are going so goddamn well.” 

“Who says I’m sulking—”

“Why don’t you let me finish the thought I started at the wedding, huh?” He’s moved a little closer, trapping Richie on the couch between himself and Ben’s future diatribe. Richie throws his arms up. 

“You’re going to anyway, aren’t ya?” 

“Right on the money as usual.” Ben rubs another hand over his jaw. “I know why you asked me, you know. Instead of Bev. Instead of Bill. Probably would’ve preferred Stan, had he been able to make it.” 

_Stan_. _Stan the Man_. Richie’s heart reels in his chest, but he’s still feeling combative and jittery.

“Asked you what,” he spits. Ben ignores him. 

“I’ve thought about it, since then, when I can.” Ben flinches to look at him. “You notice that? How in and out things are these days? One minute I can feel the wind in my hair from a hop on the back of Silver and the next minute I’m blinking in Bev’s face when she brings up my old track coach.” 

Richie swallows. Nods. It’s been the same. Back and forth. Gone one minute, there the next. Feels like the universe trying to right itself but stumbling around like a drunk man— every once in a while it hits on some gold, but the next minute it's in the gutter. 

“It’s a damn weird way to live a life,” Ben laughs.

“Tell me about it,” Richie grumbles. It’s made the stark contrast of every Eddie-tinged memory that much brighter. And darker, too. 

“Yeah, but we found something in it. And now that we’re— now that we have each other, no matter how little or how much, that’s— it’s different.”

“How do you figure?” 

Ben exhales sharply. He turns to the muted television where Richie had been watching _Golden Girls_ , the figures on the screen moving around in silence, his eyes following the lights. Richie can still imagine the canned sound of the studio audience from his guest spot in ‘87, and wonders if any of the Losers managed to catch his episode and see something familiar in his face. He can practically hear Eddie’s mother finding him reclined in front of the television and insisting he turn it off. “Filth,” she’d probably say. “No self-respecting actor would find themself there,” she’d tell him, and Eddie would quietly agree, and then change the channel, and they’d go about their nighttime routine, never quite putting a name to that tall, hammy actor flitting across the set.

“We’re connected,” Ben says, face illuminated by the artificial light in Richie’s dark living room. “We’ve always been, but now we’ve got a chance at keeping it. Like me and Bev. Bill, now that Audra knows all of him. You and Eddie.” 

“Me and Eddie nothing,” Richie says back, quick. 

“You remember him, don’t you?” Ben asks. Richie shrugs. Obviously. “It’s the same with me and Bev. I’m here, but she doesn’t fade. She’s the only thing that doesn’t.”

“You made it to my place somehow.”

“Sure, with the address in my pocket and a note to myself,” he spits. He pulls out a little slip of paper as evidence, and Richie takes it like it’ll show him the answer. “It’s not like it was before— but it’s still something.” 

The paper crinkles in Richie’s hand as he reads the note. _17560 Durham, Beverly Hills. Richie Tozier in trouble. Love??_

Richie laughs, but it comes out hollow. “Looks like the beginning of a spy flick.” Ben’s smile eases across his face as he takes the paper back.

“Yeah, kinda does.” He licks at his lips. “But I’d find her without a note. Without a clue. Maybe I would have before, if I tried, but I was too afraid. And that’s— that’s what I was trying to say before, Rich. When you asked.” 

“That you were afraid?” 

“Hell yes I was afraid!” Ben turns his body on the couch, hands grabbing at his knees, restless in his words. “Fear kept me from a lot of things, I guess. And she’s the one that found me, in the end, you know that?” His fingers tap on his thighs. “She threw herself in my arms and I thought, ‘Jesus, what was I _waiting_ for?’ Why didn’t I just _say_ it? Even all those years ago? What did I think was gonna happen?” 

Richie feels like crawling out of his skin with the truth of it. His cherry-picking memory flashes with Ben at the Chinese restaurant— always keeping his distance, but still looking from afar. 

Maybe they’re more alike than he thought. 

Ben knocks him on the arm, and they nod at each other, understanding in their pitifulness, but Richie feels at the bottom of the barrel where Ben’s been floating up and out for the last few months. 

Richie mumbles a reluctant, “Noted,” and they watch the whole Saturday rerun lineup, grumbling in their fatigued silence. Ben only stays the night, mumbling in his sleep until Richie finally flips off the television and goes to bed. 

The next morning they’re sharing a cab on the way to the airport. When Ben smiles over at him, all haughty and _right_ , he thinks about barrel-rolling out of the door. Instead he cracks the window and sticks his head out like a dog to drain out any conversation Ben tries to make. 

* * *

  
  


Eddie was in the hospital in Derry a good long while. 

A whole, oh, three weeks, if Richie’s math is correct, which it almost never is. But suffice it to say, a long time for Richie, who was two shakes of a lamb’s tail away from fleeing Derry almost as soon as he arrived. Spending a month getting to know the drug stores and hotel and library all over again was some form of punishment for almost abandoning his friends, but considering he got them back, he was oddly willing to pay the price. 

So Richie waited. He waited through multiple doctors, the mending, the physical therapy, the many iterations of Eddie he saw in that hospital bed, in that hospital room, wandering the halls with an IV and a cast and his hair drooping down in front of his face. 

It’s the longest Richie has ever waited on someone in his life. And that probably should have been a sign on its own.

When the waiting was over, it was time to go home. And Richie— 

“I thought I missed you,” Richie huffed, finally able to pause in his frantic sprint through each wing of the hospital now that he had found Eddie, holding two suitcases that pang something familiar deep in his heart, smiling fondly, but more passively than the hopeful ones he’d gotten used to seeing on that time-creased face. They came to replace the burgeoning memories of the small, oblong one of his youth. 

“Just in time,” Eddie said back, almost as breathless. 

And maybe it was that. 

Maybe it was the look on Eddie’s face, or the clenching of his fingers around the leather handles of his bag; the bag held very few of his belongings, the rest of them stranded back in New York, where he was due to fly back later that evening. 

Maybe it was the way Eddie’s eyes fluttered open a little wider when Richie took a step forward, a step toward him, a step to close the gap Richie forced in the weeks of Eddie’s recovery to keep himself together. 

Maybe it was how Eddie stared at him, or how he leaned in just an inch as Richie approached, just to get closer; maybe it was how easily Richie could have said something; maybe it was the way he almost _did._

He almost said something. He almost let the talking get the better of him. He almost peeled back the mask he thought he’d industrial-level-super-sticky glued onto his real skin, the real words, the real thoughts that have threatened to spill since he saw Julie Andrews and her golden blonde hair and her flowery voice and wondered if life was _supposed_ to make you feel this light and happy but mangled and stuffed at the same time. 

Maybe it was the way his whole body shook, and stopped, and then froze. 

Maybe it was the way his hand finally came up to cup around Eddie’s cheek; the way their eyes met; the way Eddie let him swipe a thumb across his bottom lip; the way Richie thought he could start something real, something completely anew if he just said… anything. 

Richie stepped back. Because that’s when you choke. When it’s real. 

Everything’s a whole lot tougher when it’s for real.

Instead Richie choked.

* * *

  
  


Richie’s never chased after someone in his life. But all through his trip, his feet are itching to run. And not away, this time. Toward. 

He doesn’t feel an ounce of sickness on the plane, despite realizing halfway through he forgot to pack a bag. Ben had practically pushed him out the door in a blazer and t-shirt— not that he would have _changed_ , but he may have put more thought into it— insisting they had clothes in New York, and something about “living in the moment” or “getting along with it,” but Richie was more concerned with hurriedly putting shoes on before he showed up to beg for Eddie’s forgiveness in bare feet. 

He takes the cab ride in stride, the not-so-smooth turns with yet another crumpled piece of paper stuck in his hand, this time with Eddie’s address written in Ben’s hideous scrawl. The man’s lucky he’s an architect and not a writer after all, though Richie figures they don’t do much by hand anymore these days. 

But when they finally approach the rounded driveway of their destination, and Richie catches a glimpse of a clunky white moving truck parked right in front of where the cab pulls in, the wave comes in full force. His stomach closes in on itself, like if it can curl up and crawl away the rest of his body might follow. 

A quick full body shake does nothing to remedy the situation except further disturb the nice cabbie who's been listening to Richie’s mumbled practice speeches the entire ride. He pops the door open, pays the man with most of the cash he has on hand and faces the music. 

The house is extravagant— Richie tucks that thought away for some ribbing later, if he’s so lucky; the man gave him so much guff for living in style when he’s sporting a tudor-style castle with at least five bedrooms— but it’s darker than Richie’s own, with fewer windows and more oppressive siding. It looks close to cozy. Cozy-adjacent, but not particularly Eddie-adjacent. The tall, deep brown walls and overgrown shrubbery ring more like Mrs. K, and it lances something like anger up through Richie’s spine. 

Then Eddie ducks out of the front door, and Richie’s spine turns to a big, cherry Tupperware full of Jell-O instead. 

He looks much the same as in Richie’s head, as he was in Richie’s house, as he was in Richie’s life. Normal, but sad. His face pinched with reluctant grieving. His hands flexing with stress. From this distance, Richie can see him patched in sweat, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, damp circles under his arms. Too stubborn to hire movers. Too beautiful to be doing such manual labor. A long-limbed, blonde-haired prize at the end of the rainbow, and Richie instinctually stumbles a step closer, until another, shorter man appears in the doorway behind Eddie. 

At the sight of him, brunette and dressed in black and white, Richie’s spine collects itself in spite, shoring up with misplaced jealousy. Besides, he looks all too happy to be following on Eddie’s heels when he starts to head back toward the truck.

“Who’s this?” the guy says as Richie approaches, and Eddie snaps up to see him. The connection is strong, and brief, as Eddie’s eyes skitter away as fast as they found him. Richie wants to spit out a _I don’t know, who are_ you? But he hears Eddie’s voice echoing in his head clear as day. 

_I want everything. I want—_

“Richie Tozier, nice to meet you,” he says, a little too cheesy, a little too loud, extending his hand for the— for _Joey_ to take. And that he does, jerking it up and down with squinted eyes. 

Eddie ignores Joey’s silent gaping, and Richie’s prodding stare, bending down to grab two rather large cardboard boxes and walking further toward the truck. 

This time, Richie hears Ben’s voice cut through the nerves, replacing them with new ones. 

_Just give it your all, man. Just say it._

So that’s all he’s going to do. What the “it” is, he’s still not sure, but he’s willing to give it a try. He’s had at least semi-success with opening his trap and seeing what flies out. This time he’s vowed not to let it get stopped up. Not when Eddie specifically asked him what’s rolling around in there for him. 

“Finally giving up the big mansion, huh?” Richie says, dropping Joey’s hand as Eddie skids by his shoulder; he feels the electricity as their shoulders brush.

“Is there something you want?” Eddie asks, trying to sound nonchalant, but Richie sees the tint in his cheeks. He knows Eddie’s surprised. Dare he say… pleased? And after a cross-country plane ride, Richie’s reeling a bit, too. But he follows along, butting in between where Joey is picked up another box to load into the truck after Eddie. 

“I came to, uh— help?” Richie offers. He holds out his arms, since Eddie’s got two boxes piled on top of each other. Richie’s tall! He’s strong… enough! 

“No help needed, thank you,” Eddie says, dropping and sliding them back further into the truck before turning to walk back into the house. Richie pauses, taking a breath. He expected this. He knew Eddie would be angry, and he knew he would probably get rejected. More than once. 

He expected this.

He turns around to follow Eddie back to the house, once again the dog nipping at his ankles, but this time his tail is wagging in Eddie’s wake. He’s not letting this go. After he and Ben parted in the airport— after he left Ben at check-in and charmed the woman behind a desk in order to get a last minute ticket to New York— his confidence had waned. But seeing Eddie again sets him ablaze with determination. 

Watching Eddie brush a piece of hair from his face, settling his hands on his hips and working out a game plan to load more boxes, Richie knows what he wants. He knows what he’s been missing all these years. He wants Eddie outside his own house, handing Richie boxes out of the truck so he can do all the heavy lifting. He wants Eddie shifting around his furniture to make room for family heirlooms, not so much for sentimentality, but because “they look better than the points and needles of this colorless couch.” He wants Eddie relaxing by his pool, reading in his den, cooking in his kitchen— god help them both, but he does— leaving his glasses in their shared bathroom, waking him with a snuffled kiss to the forehead, giving him grief and laughing at his jokes and rolling his eyes and and and—

When it’s standing in front of him, it’s impossible to ignore. Ben was right: he doesn’t know what the hell he was waiting for. 

“I came to offer my _help_ , Eddie. For the arrangements, the entertainment, the grieving… the- the moving!” He gestures to the many packed boxes stacked up on Eddie’s front porch. Peering up at the giant house, he longs to be able to go inside and see how Eddie’s been living all these years. But maybe the inside matches the outside. Would he see Eddie, or Eddie’s mother? Maybe it’s best to not even look. He wants Eddie as he is, now. Completely himself. 

“The funeral was yesterday,” Eddie wobbles, his lip shaking, his arms clenching around another box. Richie’s insides go cold— he feels it like a punch to the gut. 

“Eddie,” he says, quietly, reaching a hand out to cradle Eddie’s arm. It’s how he would have done it at the funeral, greeting Eddie with a somber hug. In another, better world, he would have been standing next to Eddie the whole time. Received everyone with him. Stood up straight while Eddie leaned against him, letting him hold his weight in the onslaught of all the mourners. 

Richie sees Joey approaching and wonders if he did it, instead. 

“I’m sorry. I should have been there,” he says, because it’s all he can give. That, and— “Where are you off to now?” 

Eddie chews at his lip, eyes bouncing down to the ground. His stance shifts, and Richie wants to reach out to take the heavy box from him, though he doubts Eddie would let him. 

“Joey— he has an extra place further upstate he said I could squat in until I figure out everything with the house sale.” Eddie gives a small smile as Joey passes them wordlessly, taking a box from the ground and curling his own cheesy grin in Richie’s direction. Richie feels the wave of possessiveness crest over him again, but he knows the truth of it. 

“You could—” It halts out of his mouth, so unfamiliar and genuine. He clears his throat. “Come back to California.”

Eddie’s face drops, smoothing out. “Richie—”

“No, no, hear me out,” Richie interrupts. He finally takes the box from Eddie’s hands and finds it’s not that heavy anyway. But having something between them does increase his safety. Plus, if Joey makes some sort of move, he can chuck it clean at the guy’s mug and run. “You’ve already inspected the whole place, given me all your opinions. I have enough money to redecorate as you see fit, not to mention I’d _let_ you. There’s enough room for the both of us. My sister already bought sticky buns in your name.”

He leans to nudge at Eddie’s arm. Eddie doesn’t move away.

“It’s a bit of a no-brainer,” he adds. 

Eddie taps his feet, crossing his arms over his chest in the absence of something to hold. Richie grips tighter to the cardboard. His heart thumps against it. 

“You’re acting like nothing happened,” Eddie says, leaning his body into Richie’s. Richie’s heart kicks up further, until he realizes it’s probably to muffle the conversation from poor Joey. 

“I’m not acting _anything_ , cross my heart and hope to die, I just think it’s the simplest solution.”

Eddie’s eyebrows almost knock off his face. “Simplest?? Instead of moving my things upstate, a few hours away, I should move cross-country, and abandon my business, and everything I know in New York to come live with you in your palace of white? After everything that’s happened?” 

Richie sucks in the breath shuddering through his body. He wracks his brain for more of an explanation, for something vulnerable, or maybe even a joke to tide things over until he can get things straight. Instead, he shrugs. 

“Yep.” 

Eddie laughs, despite himself, his shoulder shaking. His smile is beautiful, shiny white teeth under lips Richie’s had pressed against his own; lips he wants everywhere else, too, if he could possibly be lucky enough to pull this off. 

“And why’s that?” 

“Why’s what?” 

Eddie cocks his hip to the side, and the sense-memory is palpable. It’s flirty, and Richie feels like he’s won some sort of prize. 

“Why should I come to California? Uproot my life?” It’s searching. Pleading, almost, but in a casual way, like he’s asking a question he already knows the answer to. 

Richie sighs, lost in the sea of Eddie’s eyes. Jesus, he’s missed him. It’s barely been a week. It’s been a lifetime. What is he _waiting_ for? It all seems so simple, laid out in front of him like this. He’s not sure what’s changed, but does it really matter? Maybe it’s not about missing anything. Maybe it’s about finding something, instead. 

“Well because I love you.”

He hears the intake of Eddie’s breath, and almost throws the box to the ground with his haste to cover Eddie’s mouth with his own. But… It's Eddie’s things. So he sets it down gently, bad back and ominous pop be damned, and takes a step forward.

Eddie meets him halfway this time. 

It’s the soft, pleading kiss Richie might have imagined for them once upon a time ago, all the way back in his youth, and on some days he thought of nothing else. But Eddie always manages to surprise him. His hands find Richie’s hips, holding gently to pull him closer, to strain against him as his nose presses into Richie’s cheek. Richie feels a rasp of stubble he didn’t expect from Eddie, but it thrills him. The stab of pain is wholly welcome. He wants to _feel_ this. To know that Eddie wants it, will press in, will keep him close, will break apart to take a breath and smile into him, like he’s done in Richie’s dreams. 

Richie’s tongue sweeps in one hesitant wave, and Eddie sighs, nipping at it with his teeth before throwing his arms around Richie’s neck. 

Someone clears their throat behind Richie, and it takes him a full, blinking moment to realize that Joey is still there. Eddie pulls away much quicker, presumably embarrassed, and the apple-red of his blush confirms it. Richie would feel, perhaps, a twinge of regret if he weren’t on the edge of getting everything he’s ever wanted. And for _real_ this time. 

“Joey, I can explain—” 

But Joey’s incessantly shaking his head, averting his eyes, grabbing for another box.

“No need, Eddie, I’ll— uh. I’ll be, uh. Over— I’m gonna—” he murmurs, tripping his way off the porch and back toward the truck. Eddie clenches his eyes shut, his arms having slid down to wrap loosely around Richie’s waist. Richie can feel the heat of his body. 

“Whoops?” he offers. Eddie rolls his eyes, smacks Richie across the chest with very little power behind it. He leans back in, but Eddie reels back, gently. 

“Me too. You know that, right?” 

Richie squints. Pretends to give it pause. “Hard to know something you haven’t said, darlin’.” 

“Hmmm. There’s a few more things I’d like to hear from you, mister,” Eddie hums, his tongue slowly licking over his lips, so warm and pleasant Richie can feel it radiating between them. “I guess we’ll work up to it.” 

* * *

By morning, they’ve worked up to quite a bit. In fact, when Richie wakes— tucked up naked against Eddie’s back, the covers thrown away in the night in favor of cuddling closer together to retain heat— his searching hands find Eddie still damp and open for him. 

As soon as they’d finished packing up the moving truck (and before _that_ , finished smooching a bit more, just for posterity, and because Richie wanted Eddie to _know_ , more than what his words could even convey), they moseyed their way to the closest hotel Eddie found suitable. Richie slapped down his card and Eddie’d pawed it away and slapped down his own, and Richie made a joke about being a kept man and almost jumped Eddie right there and then when he blushed so furiously he could barely look the desk clerk in the eye as he signed on the dotted line. 

That is, until Richie could pull Eddie into said room, and remedy the last situation ten-fold, kneeling on the surprisingly clean carpet to rid Eddie of his slacks and underwear and sanity and embarrassment to lick inside of him so deep Eddie later admitted he’d seen stars. He’d laid Eddie out on the bed and taken him, slowly, at first, showing him he cared, showing him he could take his time and really savor it; until Eddie gripped him hard around the hip and urged him on, and then they both lost it, pounding the headboard into the wall and knocking a painting of wildflowers to the floor. They stopped to giggle their heads off before Eddie rocked beneath Richie and Richie took two of Eddie’s fingers into his mouth and then it was nothing but groaning and saliva and the _slap slap slap_ of their bodies coming together again and again. 

After, they flipped on the television, and Richie slung an arm around Eddie’s shoulders as they devolved into snores together. 

In all of its perfection, Richie might think he had dreamed it up, if not for the writhing, willing body responding to his touch again this morning.

“Mmmmmhh,” Eddie hums into it, pushing his hips back and pulling a quiet rumble of a laugh from Richie. 

He’ll need something more than enthusiasm and the evidence of last night’s events to go deeper, but he relishes the feel of Eddie on the pads of his fingers, his thumb, the entirety of his cheek filling Richie’s palm. Eddie, on the other… well, hand, seems content to stay right there, grinding back for more. 

“That was fast,” he nuzzles into Eddie’s spine, his fingers prodding between Eddie’s cheeks to really _press_. “Who needs coffee in the morning when you’ve got an eager man waiting in your bed?”

“Don’t think I can’t feel your own tenacity back there, Eager Beaver,” Eddie moans, lifting his leg slightly to rub against where Richie’s cock is plumping nicely behind him. Richie chokes out his own noise. 

“Think we cracked some of the plaster last night already.” Richie’s one knuckle deep with no sign of stopping. He’s always been tenacious— and insatiable, according to his partners— but something about Eddie is like releasing a pent-up set of coils in the pit of his stomach; it’s a maddening, endless sense of need he’s not sure he’s ever felt. 

Eddie reaches back to grab at where Richie’s arm is pumping in and out gently, only to ease him away and turn in his grip. And that’s the moment Richie decides (though it’s already been decided, about forty times over in the past twenty-four hours, every single moment and every single breath) that he won’t be waking up without Eddie Kaspbrak in his bed again, not if he can help it. Eddie’s face is lined and sleepy, soft and wrinkled up between his eyes, where he’s watching Richie with an impatient wonder, free from his glasses and the outside world. Nothing between them anymore. 

Richie wraps his arms tightly around him and sends a little promise up to heaven to keep it that way, for as long as they both shall live. 

“I think I want to try something,” Eddie says, his line of thought perhaps a little less chaste, if the way his hand grips at Richie’s cock is any indication. Richie shuffles against him, smiling wide. 

“Oh?” He asks, and Eddie hums back at him, twisting his hand around the head, setting a leisurely pace. “I’m open to any and all suggestions that begin _th_ — _hnnggg_ —” And then he _squeezes_ , his mouth latching to where Richie’s neck meets his shoulder and sucking; Richie feels accosted on all fronts. After all, he didn’t really let Eddie get much effort in last night. Or last time. 

Turns out, Eddie’s quite the idea man. 

He spends a few calm minutes stroking Richie to full hardness, even ducking down for a second to wet Richie’s whistle before reappearing with a gasp and a question.

“Where’s the supplies?” He asks, like it’s a simple request, and not burning Richie’s nerves from the inside out. Like he’s not licking over his already shiny lips. Like he’s not still fondling Richie’s balls in between his fingers. 

Richie barely has the brain capacity to process his words, but he manages to point in the direction of the little brown paper bag on the corner of the dresser, evidence of their only stop before the hotel, though that excursion was Tozier-only. Richie suddenly mourns all the Kaspbrak blushes that could have been. 

Regrettably, Eddie has to move to retrieve the bag, pressing a kiss to Richie’s chest in apology. Richie takes the moment to shift up the bed, then rolls forward onto his knees. Eddie shakes his head as soon as he catches wind. 

“On your back,” Eddie tells him, but the syrupy texture of Richie’s neurons don’t quite twig, even while he follows the orders. It’s not until Eddie’s standing over him and slapping the little bottle of lube he’d gotten double of for good measure into his hand and staring expectantly that Richie realizes what this spread-eagle position is _for_. 

“Well?” Eddie goads, lacing the fingers of their left hands while Richie works slowly with his right. It’s not exactly a one-hand-job, but Eddie’s busying himself with straddling Richie’s whole middle, pressing his pretty, shining cock right into the well of Richie’s belly-button and settling himself against Richie’s thighs, so Richie doesn’t exactly want to _bother_ him for help. 

Luckily, Eddie offers him a free hand. Richie pours some liquid (a little too much but he’s got Eddie’s warm behind clenching lazily around his cock, _thankyouverymuch_ ) onto it and rips the condom open with his teeth.

“Not _safe_ ,” Eddie hisses, snaking an arm around to push a finger into himself, and it’s like someone pressed a scalding hot iron deep into Richie’s abdomen. 

“Better than nothing, darlin’,” he replies cooly, and Eddie’s eyes go wide. Richie knows he’s thinking of California, of Richie on his knees, of drooling desperation into wooden panels and a darkened hallway. 

“I wouldn’t— I mean I _didn’t_ —”

Richie forgoes the condom for a minute, gripping at Eddie’s hip, his chest burning with guilt. 

“I know, I know, it was careless, I just got so—” 

But Eddie’s eyes snap up to his. “ _No_ , I— I liked it.” They dart back and forth, almost embarrassed, until Richie thumbs at his chin. Then they screw up in determination. “I liked you— you wanting me that badly. That you just couldn’t—”

“I couldn’t,” Richie assures him. It makes Eddie laugh, soft and quiet, rocking on top of him. Richie brings their folded hands to his mouth, laying kisses over each of Eddie’s knuckles. “I really couldn’t.” 

Eddie watches him, eyelids flickering. “I couldn’t either.” 

“Then let’s not.” 

Eddie nods.

And this time, _this time,_ they really do take it slow. 

Well… as slow as they can. Because as soon as Eddie gets up to two fingers, Richie’s humping up impatiently against where he’s pressed inside, so desperate to replace his own ministrations and bring them together. 

Eddie makes him wait.

He sits up there, a shining angel, immune to Richie’s murmured pleading, watching with dark eyes. One hand is spread across the hair on Richie’s stomach, petting lightly along with his movements; the other is out of sight, though Richie knows he doesn’t need it. He’s open and wet already, like he’s been waiting all night for Richie to muster up the energy to take him again. 

Richie’s body is absolutely _pouring_ sweat into the bed. Frankly, he’s been on the wrong side of rank since yesterday, since getting off the plane and gathering the courage to apologize (which he did, again and again, kissed into Eddie’s neck, his hands, whispered into his ear when they were done and into his thighs when they’d barely started, _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ until Eddie was breathless in forgiveness), since rolling around on a germy hotel bedspread and falling asleep before remembering to even rinse off. But Eddie woke happily, all folded into him, so he tries to shake the worry.

“Richie,” Eddie breathes, and Richie doesn’t waste a second, tips his body to the side so Eddie can lift up and tuck Richie’s cock right against his hole and—

“ _Eddie_ —”

“Oh- ohhhh… Richie.” Eddie sinks down like he’s meant to, like he’s been doing it for years, and Richie thinks, rather nonsensically, _I want him to have been mine forever_. Richie’s eyes burn with the threat of tears. He curses himself for being so goddamn cheesy over the blonde bombshell currently rocking his world once inch at a time. 

“Y’oh… y’okay up there?” Richie chokes out once Eddie makes it all the way down. Eddie huffs a giggle, the vibrations rubbing straight down Richie’s spine. 

“Very, very okay, yes,” he groans. He sweeps hair out of his face, golden and ragged from sleep. He rocks in the seat of Richie’s pelvis. Circles his hips. Grinds the palm of his hand against his erection, where it curves up, interested, on Richie’s stomach. 

Richie can feel where he’s stretched out and hot, where Eddie’s adjusting and taking him so well; he pets at Eddie’s arms and opens his mouth to congratulate him on a job well done, but all that comes out is a whimper in the face of Eddie beginning to move in earnest. 

Each time they’ve done this before, Richie’s been in control. His hands on Eddie’s hips, manhandling Eddie where he wants him, him deciding how fast or slow or hard or soft things would go with Eddie’s breathy pleas to egg him on. Now, with Eddie on top and in the driver’s seat, Richie is content to lay back and let it happen.

As long as he can still talk. 

“You look so good up there, baby, so good for me,” he says, rambles, tells Eddie over and over again so he knows it’s the truth. The pinch between Eddie’s eyebrows gets tighter with each word, his hips kicking up their crooked, broken circles onto Richie’s cock, and Richie wants to cry with how much he has to say. “I can’t— _darlin’_ you’re everything. So beautiful.” 

“ _Richie_.” 

“You are, you are,” Richie insists, unable to stop the brief and violent rock of his own hips, which sends Eddie toppling toward him. “Careful there, cowboy!” 

“Hhhuhhh,” Eddie replies, burying his face in Richie’s neck instead of resuming the position. He lifts his ass in smaller thrusts, and the pressure is so delicious-- Eddie’s cock rubbing between them-- that Richie reaches around to pull him down harder. Eddie’s shivering in his grasp; Richie fingers at where he’s pressed inside to make Eddie cry out. 

They ride it out like that, gasping into skin, sweating together, dripping into the sheets and each other. The leverage leaves a little to be desired, but Richie will spend tomorrow complaining about the burning in his calves and his thighs. Not now. Not with Eddie bouncing him to orgasm, springing up just a little to wrap a hand around himself. Richie lets him— the angle doesn’t allow much else— and takes the rambling back up best he can to bring Eddie to the edge. 

“Didn’t think I deserved this from you. Didn’t think I’d— _ha_ , _ah,_ Eddie, _baby_ , darling, didn’t think you’d ever love me like I love you, didn’t think you’d—”

“Richie, _please_.” Eddie’s voice is a crackly mess, pumping himself fast and furious, a blur between them. Richie white-knuckles around his hips and takes over, his energy coming in staccato bursts, slapping their bodies together until Eddie starts to cry out in ecstasy. He doesn’t slow enough to watch, just holds Eddie tight and pushes up hard and fast, emptying himself in Eddie’s body as Eddie shakes on top of him. 

Richie tries to pull back, wants to see, or check, just to make sure that Eddie hasn’t turned into a puddle of goo in his arms, just wants to see him smile now that they’re back to their senses. But Eddie holds him close and wheezes, like he used to before he took a couple big sucks on his aspirator when they were kids. 

“Eddie? You alright there, Spaghetti Man?” Richie asks desperately, one second from scrambling off the bed to check Eddie’s bag for an emergency supply when he feels Eddie’s gasp, and he realizes… Eddie is _laughing_. 

“I’m— I’m—” he’s trying to say, until Richie digs fingers into his armpits and sets him off into another tumble of laughter. Their bodies squirm together, sticky and slick and lovely, and Richie wonders if the rest of his life could possibly be this good. 

“Glad to hear you’ve enjoyed yourself,” Richie says with an exaggerated sigh. Eddie finally lifts his head at the sound. The laughter still hiccups out of him in spotty waves, but he looks concerned. His eyes wrinkle for a moment until he gives up the ghost completely and presses a kiss to Richie’s mouth. Richie lets him in immediately — why the hell wouldn’t he after _that_? — and Eddie groans his appreciation. Richie’s still tucked up inside, softening where Eddie is holding him, and after a few more moments of kissing, Richie pulls back to let Eddie climb off. 

His knees creak with the movement, but Eddie’s a trouper, spreading out on his side while Richie peers down at himself. 

“Finally time for a shower, methinks.” He flicks at the hair leading down his belly and hisses when it pulls painfully. Eddie watches him dreamily. The daylight floods the room now. Maybe it did before. All Richie could see was the man in his bed. 

“I’ll go with you, I haven’t showered since the move.” 

Richie sniffs at the air, then digs his nose into the crook of Eddie’s armpit and breathes deep. Eddie giggles again, pressing at his chest to force him away, sputtering his disgust. 

“I’m getting Pledge—” _sniff_ “—maybe some sweat—” _sniff sniff_ “—ah yes, and the tell-tale scent of a man in love.” 

“Richie _Tozier_ , you are insufferable.” Eddie squirms, pulling Richie closer as he’s laughing his disdain. Richie cuddles in where he’s welcome, the mess forgotten, for at least the moment. 

“Well I’m not wrong,” Richie tells him. He sweeps a hand up his back, over each bump of his ribcage, careful not to put on too much pressure for reasons unknown. Eddie’s not fragile. He can take it, but Richie uses gentle fingers. Gentle kisses. 

Eddie looks at him that way, too. Gentle. 

With love. 

“You’re not,” Eddie agrees. Smacks a kiss against his cheek. “Now let’s get cleaned up and on the road.” He pushes off the bed and makes toward the bathroom when Richie grabs him quick around the arm. Time to come clean before they get clean.

“You know that, uh. That drug store, where I got the _supplies_?” 

Eddie squints, then blushes. “Yes?” 

“Well, they had a pay phone, you see,” Richie says, those nerves drumming up again in his chest. “And I might have had a few extra quarters rattling around in my pockets from the airport. You know how kids drop things, even money, those irresponsible little—”

“You called someone?” Eddie asks, and Richie laughs with the interruption. 

“Yes indeed. I called my real estate agent, actually.” He tries not to meet Eddie’s eyes, but they’re brown and wide and _everywhere_ , as big as the globe in Miss Smith’s history class, the one he used to spin as fast as it would go and listen to Eddie and Bill bicker at him for threatening to break it. 

The thing is… he’s definitely getting ahead of himself. He and Eddie had discussed their trip back to California briefly, in that Richie knows Eddie is coming back with him, and sending his things there first class, and maybe even looking into moving his career that-a-ways once they get things a little more settled. But he may have jumped the gun on the other bit. 

He definitely jumped the gun. 

Eddie’s still flying in the dark, apparently. He smacks Richie across the chest. “Why did you do that? I told you I was fine staying at your place.” 

“ _Fine_ , sure, but not _great_.” Richie waggles his eyebrows and Eddie smacks him again. It’s so light he barely feels it. “But you loathe my place, don’t think I didn’t see it on your face every day you did your judgement laps around the living room.” 

Eddie can’t deny that one. He doesn’t even have it in him to look guilty, his eyes just fall to inspect the ugly bedspread like he’s contemplating asking the management where it was purchased so he can find its duplicate. 

“That doesn’t mean I have to stay somewhere _else_ ,” Eddie insists. Richie wants to laugh again. He really isn’t seeing this coming. But why would he? It’s bonkers. 

“I’m not looking for you to stay elsewhere, my blonde beauty, I’m trying to find a place we could buy _together_.” 

And that drops like some sort of bomb on Eddie’s face. He jerks back in a second, and Richie’s almost positive he’s messed this up for life. Why couldn’t he just wait? He’s never rushed into things — save for his second marriage — and he’s not sure why Eddie makes him want to start. But what’s the wait? 

What’s the—

“You want to buy a… a house…”

“Yes,” Richie says with a nod, twirling his finger to indicate more. Eddie’s getting there. Very slowly. 

“...with me.” 

“Exactly. Right on the money.” 

“In California?” Eddie asks, the pinch in his eyebrows back, but less sexy this time. His tongue comes out to wet his lips.

Okay, it’s still rather sexy. What can Richie say? He’s found beauty incarnate; he’s not willing to let that slide without a major commitment to show for himself. 

“Wherever you want, darlin’. Just thought it might be easiest, for now.” He chuffs at Eddie’s chin, just to see him smile. It works half-way, but Richie will take it. “We can always get another place in New York, if it ends up working out that way. I’m flexible.” 

“Flexible,” Eddie says back, his head churning with thought. Richie sees it lighting up his eyes as he considers it. Then he gets a real smile. “Isn’t this fast?” 

“Fast, schmast, I want both our names on the deed.” 

“B-but… _how_?” 

Richie shrugs. He really doesn’t care. Maybe Eddie does, and that’s fine. Maybe they won’t tell many people. Maybe they’ll tell their families— or maybe just Richie’s, since Eddie doesn’t have much left, with his mother gone. Maybe they’ll tell their… their _friends_. Maybe they’ll keep it for themselves. Maybe they’ll move to California, or New York, or Seattle, or maybe that little town in Massachusetts he keeps hearing has made quite a bit of space for people like them. 

He’ll go anywhere. Do anything. As long as he has Eddie by his side. 

So Richie shrugs. 

“Lots to figure out, Spaghetti Man. But no one else I’d wanna figure it out with,” he says, and Eddie’s face slopes into a wider smile. 

“Right,” Eddie says, inhaling sharply, peering down at himself. He’s still covered in all sorts of mess, but he doesn’t seem to mind much anymore. He looks back up at Richie, a sense of determination replaced on his face. “I love you,” he says, like it’s simple.

And it is. 

Richie smiles back. 

“You don’t say.” 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The line "Everything's a lot tougher when it's for real. That's when you choke. When it's for real" is from the Richie section in the book - I thought it was interesting and wanted to expand on it, and voila, here came this fic!
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Please leave me a comment if you're able, and as always, find me on Tumblr at [tinyangryeddie](https://tinyangryeddie.tumblr.com/) or Twitter, where I'm [camerasparring](https://twitter.com/camerasparring)!


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